The Darker Side

21

"I GOT A CALL FROM ATKINS. HE SURFS A LOT OF THOSE VIRAL video sites-"

"Come again?" I ask.

"Websites that allow users to post video clips," James explains.

"They can be self-made, or they can be thirty-second to three-minute clips people encoded from the news or a DVD or whatever."

I frown. "What's the point of that?"

"Entertainment," Callie says. "Voyeurism. Socializing. You have everything from skateboards crashing into the sidewalk and breaking wrists to cute just-legal somethings talking about world events while sitting around in their bikinis."

I sigh. "Bonnie probably knows all about this stuff."

Callie pats my head. "Everyone does except you, honey-love."

Alan opens up a browser and types in a url: user-tube.com. A moment later, the screen fills with a series of neatly arranged thumbnail photos. Each thumbnail has text aligned beneath it.

"Wipeout," I read below one.

The photo shows someone flying off a motorbike as it crashes into the ground.

Alan clicks it and a new page loads. The video clip begins to play. Sure enough, we see a motorbike hit a ramp, fly into the air, and miss its mark. The rider does a real-life Superman as the bike crunches into the ground. He lands, bounces a few times, and ends up in a tangled heap.

"Ouch," I say, wincing.

"There's more," Alan observes.

Whoever made the clip did us and all other viewers the service of rewinding to the moment before the crash and replaying it all in glorious slow motion. We get to hear the crunches and crashes in that long, drawn-out ohhhhhhhhhh-nooooooo druggy reverb, get to watch the hapless rider arrow through the air and bounce like a human basketball.

"Gross," I observe.

"Modern day Roman arena," Callie says.

"What's all that posted below the clip?" I ask.

"User comments," Alan says. "You create an account. That lets you upload your own clips and allows you to comment on stuff other people have posted."

He scrolls down a little so I can read some of the witticisms. Motherfucking WIIIIIIPEOUT!

Who says a man can't fly?

Holy shit, did you see him bounce? Holy shit!

We all saw the same thing you did, you dumb fag. .

"Highbrow," I remark.

"It's not all mayhem," Alan says, navigating back to the home page. "They have categories, see?"

I read. Family Fun. Animals. Romance. I start to understand the attraction.

"So anyone can come on here, upload a video clip, and have others talk about it?"

"Yep. You get a lot of crap, but you also get some pretty creative stuff. Short movies, comedians and musicians trying to get heard, all kinds of things."

"And sex, I'd imagine?"

"Actually, they police that pretty hard. No nudity allowed."

"No problem with gore, though," James observes.

"Nope."

I glance at Alan. "And you frequent this site?"

He shrugs. "What can I say? It's addictive. Each clip is a snack, not a meal."

"You can't eat just one," Callie chirps.

"Okay," I say. "I understand the structure. Now show me what it has to do with us."

Alan points to the listing of categories.

"There's a religious category. Generally, it has a few different uses. Preachers or would-be preachers giving three-minute sermons, a farrighter talking about the sins of abortion, a far-lefter talking about the sins of organized religion in general."

He clicks on the category and a new row of thumbnail images fills the screen.

"The top ten are the ones you need to see."

He clicks on a thumbnail. There is a black screen. White, block letters appear: The Beginning of the Opus-A Study of Truth and the Soul. The letters fade into another few seconds of blackness and then open to the mid-body shot of a man. He is seated at a simple brown wooden table. He is only visible from the shoulders down to the tabletop. The wall behind him is blank gray concrete. The light source comes from above, just enough to illuminate him and some of his surrounds. The word austere comes to mind. Snow on a treeless field. His hands are clasped in front of him, resting on the table. They are draped with a rosary. He wears a black shirt and a black jacket.

"The study of the nature of truth," he begins, "is the study of the nature of God." The voice is low, but not bass, more alto. It's a pleasant voice. Calm, measured, relaxed.

"Why is this? Because the basic truth of all things is that they exist as God created them. To view the truth of something is to view it exactly as it is, unlayered by your own views, your own preconceptions, your own additions to its composition. To view the truth of something is to see it not as you want it to be, but as it is. In other words, to see it exactly as God created it to be, at the moment of its creation. Thus, when you see the truth of something, you are, in fact, allowing yourself to see a piece of the face of God."

"Interesting. Cogent," James murmurs.

"What, then, prevents us from perceiving this truth? We were all born with eyes to see, with ears to hear. We all have a brain to process the input of our senses. Why, then, do two men witness an automobile accident and have entirely different versions of the truth? Why, further, does a video camera recording of the same accident demonstrate both men's observations to be incorrect?

"The answer is obvious: only the video camera records without alteration. What, then, is the difference between the man and the camera?" He pauses for a moment. "The difference is that the video camera has no filter of 'self.' It has no soul, no mind. One can then extrapolate that where errors in judgment occur, the soul and the mind are the sources of the flaw.

"But if God created all things, and He did, then we must acknowledge that He created the soul and the mind as well. God does not make mistakes. Therefore, the soul and the mind, at birth, are perfection, capable of perceiving exact and basic truth. One could argue that, at birth, no filter exists at all between the truth of the world and the self. What, then, is this 'filter'? This thing that changes man over time, that makes his recollection less reliable than a video camera?"

Fade to black again, followed by those same white block letters proclaiming, End Part One.

I turn to Alan. "This is fascinating-but what does it have to do with us?"

"Keep watching."

He clicks on the next thumbnail and we go through the black screen, white letters, and return to the narrator.

"The filter is sin. The catalyst is power of choice. God gave man the ability to choose between heaven and hell. To choose between everlasting glory or eternal damnation. From the moment we're dragged from the womb, we begin to make choices. The nature of our choices, over time, are what decide our fate when Death knocks.

"From the moment we choose sin, we create the filter. We pull a veil over our eyes, create a barrier between ourselves and the basic truth of things as God created them. Do you see? As we alter the basic truth of us, that truth that God created, we change, thus, our perception of all of the other truths and works of God. This is described in many places within the Bible, such as in the story of Saul.

" 'As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?' And he said, 'Who are You, Lord?' And He said, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.' The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

"You see? Saul could not see Jesus even though Jesus was before him. And later:

" 'Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized; and he took food and was strengthened.'

"Saul repented his sins and came to Christ and was thereafter no longer blind. There are those, I know, who will see only the literal in this and no metaphor. I see it as a direct message, an example of the paradigm I have been discussing. Saul was a sinner, and thus, he was blind to God even when God was before him. Saul was filled with God, and his sight was restored. What could be more obvious, more basic, more true?

"And so I say to you, as someone who has worked all his life to be an observer of God's truth, that your sins, your secrets, your lies, these are what prevent you from seeing the simplicity of the love in the world around you.

"Perhaps you hear this and you agree and you have decided, now I will live in truth. I will be honest, I will sin no more. I applaud and encourage you in this, but I must be honest and tell you-you will fail unless you come to understand this fact: truth is not a striving, it is an immediate arrival.

"What do I mean by this?

"It is explained in our next discussion: the nature of the truth that hides a lie, and the example of Lisa/Dexter Reid."

Fade to black.

"Oh shit," I say.

"It gets worse," Alan replies, grim.

He clicks the next thumbnail. I watch and fight the unease that's coming to a slow bubble inside my belly.

Again the hands. They haven't moved once since we began watching.

"Lisa Reid was born Dexter Reid, son to Dillon and Rosario Reid. Dexter became unhappy with the body God had given him, and chose instead to alter that body in an attempt to become a woman.

"All can agree that this is an abomination against the Lord. But it is here, with this misguided soul, that we most vividly illustrate the phenomenon of the truth that hides a lie. The phenomenon goes as such: a person reveals a secret, a sin, a lie. It is not a small thing that they reveal. It requires courage to do so, and it garners them both relief and admiration. They receive praise for having 'come clean.' All of which would be well and good. . except for the fact that they had a deeper, darker, as yet unrevealed secret.

"You see? By revealing one great sin, they remove all suspicion that there might be another. We watch them tell the truth, cry tears of relief along with them, and wish we had their strength of character, their newfound courage and virtue. Unbeknownst to us, something more terrible remains unseen.

"This is what I meant when I said that truth was not a striving, but an immediate arrival. One either comes to the truth all at once, or not at all. There is no halfway mark on the path to God. You are either with him or you are not.

"Dexter Reid became Lisa Reid. He came into the open, he revealed his secret-the desire to become a woman-to the world. He accepted all the disgust, chastisement, and blame that would accrue with this. He walked this path unflinching, refusing to be deterred by the disapproval of society. Some-many, even-saw this and admired him for it. Dexter's life was difficult, even dangerous, but he did what he did because he felt he must, in spite of the obstacles. The definition of courage."

Another pause. The hands move this time. One thumb comes free and rubs the beads of the rosary.

"But Dexter had another secret. He detailed it in his journal. I have those pages of the journal here, as I stole them after I killed him."

Fade to black. The white letters Continued in next clip.

"Dammit!" I say.

"It's a hard medium to get used to," Alan allows. Alan clicks on the next thumbnail. When the video begins, the screen is filled with a page of paper. I recognize Lisa's handwriting. The narrator pulls the page away from the lens and holds it in his right hand so he can read it. The rosary remains draped in his left, and he moves the beads between thumb and forefinger with reverence, a motion I can tell is as natural to him as walking. He begins to read.

THE SIN of DEXTER REID 22

IT WAS A GREAT SUMMER DAY. GREAT. HOT AND NOT TOO muggy and filled with the promise of everything but school. Dexter stood on the porch of the house and surveyed his neighborhood. It was a good neighborhood, no doubt about that. Not the good that came of new homes, but the comfortable good of old homes kept up to snuff.

The sky was blue and visible in that way Mom called "Texas Sky."

Texas was flat and rolling and Austin was not all that fond of skyscrapers, so in many places you could see blue from horizon to horizon. It was all right. Dexter had awoken this Saturday to do his usual routine. It was precious to him, and growing more so as he got older and began to get the hint that times were changing. He was eleven, and already he could see the lines between the sexes-once so blurred-being forced into focus. Guys only a year older were talking about things like "pussy" a lot more and with a genuine interest and hunger. It was disconcerting. Dexter had been able to wake up at 5:30 A.M. on Saturday mornings with no alarm since he was six years old. He'd discovered that some of the best cartoons, the old black and whites that you never saw anywhere else anymore, were on in those early hours. He'd get up and head down to the kitchen and treat himself to homemade cinnamon toast. His version included huge hunks of butter, unhealthy helpings of sugar, and just enough cinnamon to give it all a little bit of bite. In it went to the toaster oven, out it came with the butter bubbling. He'd watch it cook, stare at the heating coils turned orange by their temperature.

He loved these mornings, loved that no one else was awake, that he had the house to himself, at least in illusion. It was a feeling of freedom and safety, not so much as if nothing bad would ever happen-

but the certainty that nothing bad would happen now, at this moment. The times between 5:30 and 8:00 A.M. were an armistice in Dexter's heart.

He'd grab the toast once it had cooled enough (but not too much) and put it on some paper towels and head into the living room where the TV was. He'd switch on the set and put it to the right channel and plop down on his beanbag. Mom hated the beanbag, and Dad wasn't all that excited about it-he called it a seventies throwback-but Dexter had stood firm on keeping it. It was a talisman, a part of the ritual.

Sometimes they'd still play "Inky and the Mynah Bird" in Texas in those early morning hours, but most of the time, it was "Huckleberry Hound" or some old unclassifiable cartoons. These turned into "Tom and Jerry" and from there to the "Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show."

He'd watch them all, and make mental lists during the commercials of the cool new toys to bug Mom and Dad about.

The first part of the magic ended at about 8:00, as Mom and Dad got up. He loved them both, but the ritual was all about solitude; their presence broke the spell. He'd hit the shower and get dressed as they stumbled through their first coffees. A kiss on Mom's cheek and a mumbled good morning from Dad and he was out the door by 8:30. Now here he was, cartoons and cinnamon toast behind him, the whole day before him. What to do? He had a few bucks in his pocket, the result of lawn-mowing industry. He could head to the Circle K

and buy some comics. He could grab his bike and ride to the pool. Heck, he could do anything he wanted!

He opted to walk, an unusual choice, but the day was just so great and he wanted to feel the ground underneath his tennis shoes. He headed down to the junction, which is what he called the top of the T

where his street met another at a stop sign. Right took you to the park and the pool, left took you to Rambling Oaks, what the kids called the "woods."

It was not exactly a "woods," more like a copse gone wild. It was the edge of development, dirt not yet turned by tractors in preparation for new home construction. Most times he didn't like to go to the woods alone, but today was different. Dexter was a social boy, but he didn't feel like company right now. So he turned left and not right. It was a simple decision that would change his life forever, which is the way it usually goes. The street dead-ended in dirt. The dirt ended at the trees. Walk through the trees a little and you came out to grass, which then led to more pavement and new homes. The woods were a kind of last stand and all sorts of things happened there.

First cigarettes had been smoked in the woods by more kids than could be counted. First kisses had been tasted, and of course there were the rumors of first blow jobs and such, though Dexter wasn't sure about that. He wasn't brilliant or anything, but he had a little more wisdom than most of his peers, and he had the sneaking suspicion that getting a girl from this neighborhood to suck on your Johnson involved better surrounds than a place like the woods. A car, at least.

Dirty mags had been read here, and Dexter had seen a few in the last year, though his reactions were ambiguous in a way that didn't seem to match up with his friends'. So he'd leered and joked with the rest of them, tossing off verbal gems like "hairy clam" and "furburger" with snickering confidence and aplomb. None of it made sense to Dexter, as the girls in the pictures he saw were hairless down there, and what did a burger have to do with it, anyway?

People had wept in these woods too, Dexter was aware. Nice neighborhood or no, kids still got beat, from time to time. Abuse existed, though it wasn't talked about much. The woods had been a sanctuary, a haven, a place for the simple, the illicit, the groping, and the sad. Even at eleven, Dexter understood that the woods was going to be one of those places he'd never forget. It would always have power, even if just in memory.

He took his time walking down the street. Enjoying the sunshine and the sounds. No one was crazy enough to be out mowing this early, but two people were out washing their cars, which Dexter thought was a fine idea. He stuck his hands in his pockets and found a white stone in one of the gutters to kick. It was going to be a hell of a day!

The pavement ended and he hit the dirt. There were two kinds of Texas dirt. There was the dark, dry, clumpy sod, the kind that grass grew in and came out in chunks. Then there was the tan, almost granular kind, that soaked up the sun and was generally filled with detritus, stones and such. This was the second kind.

The trees weren't too far off, and Dexter decided that he would really make a morning out of his walk. He'd head through the woods, out the other side, and into the neighborhood next door. He'd circle around and be back at home in time for some bologna or peanut butter and jelly and probably some Kool-Aid. Then maybe a trip to the comic store and the pool.

Why not? The day was his.

He quickened his pace toward the trees, excited by all the prospects unfolding before him. That's when he heard them.

"Kiss it, you fucking retard," the voice said.

Dexter recognized this voice. Any kid in the neighborhood would. It belonged to Mark Phillips, bully and all around evil individual. Mark's story was as unoriginal as the Texas dirt under Dexter's tennis shoes: he grew fast, he grew tall, he grew wide, and he liked the power this gave him over others.

He had various protection rackets running, as bullies will. Some lunch-money graft, comic-book offerings, allowance percentages. Noncompliance was met with punishment, and it was here that Mark truly excelled. He was a cut above, willing to go that extra mile. The average bully would smack you around, maybe give you a titty twister, or hold you down while dripping a stream of spit into your mouth. Mark used these standbys as well, but the difference was in how far he was willing to take it. Tears were generally a sign that your point had been made. Not so for Mark.

Dexter had been on the receiving end one time. For some reason-

he still didn't know why-he' d refused to turn over a comic that Mark had asked for. Mark's response had been instant and savage. He'd slapped Dexter's face so hard it made him feel like his eyes were rattling around in their sockets. Mark had followed it up with a shot to the solar plexus that drove Dexter to his knees, gasping for breath. Mark had swarmed on top of him in an instant, pinning him to the ground, arms trapped under Mark's knees.

"Faggot grew some balls, huh? Bad idea, faggot. Now you gotta pay."

Dexter had felt he was already paying. His inability to catch his breath had panic rising in his chest like a flood. He was sure that he was dying. He wasn't, but it felt like it.

"Gonna show you something I learned watching a martial arts program, faggot," Mark said. His tone was almost happy, and Dexter looked up at the boy and removed the "almost" from that equation. Mark put a thumb to either side of Dexter's face, digging into a spot just under the upper cheekbone. He pressed up. Not hard, which made it all the more terrifying, because even that little pressure hurt.

"It's a nerve someajigger or a pressure point or something. Whatever they call it, it hurts worse than a kick in the balls."

Then he really dug in, turned his thumbs into steel rods and pressed with all of his not inconsiderable strength. Dexter couldn't help it; his eyes bugged out and he didn't just yell, he screamed. The agony was instant and terrible and everywhere. It felt like Mark had driven spikes into Dexter's jaw. He could see Mark through his pain, white-edged now, grinning away. Mark's eyes were shining and Dexter became aware that the boy actually had a hard-on. Mark was making Dexter scream, and it was giving the bigger boy a woody.

It should have stopped there. With another bully, it would have. But that was the day Dexter learned that Mark was willing to go that extra mile, to really put his heart into it, so to speak. Because he didn't stop. He pressed harder. He pressed and grinned while Dexter screamed, and kept on pressing until Dexter pissed his pants. In the end, Dexter was begging the older boy to stop.

"Is your momma a whore?" the older boy asked.

"Yes, yes, yes!" Dexter screamed.

"Say it, then. Tell me your momma is a dirty old wetback buttfuckloving, cock-gobbling whore!"

Again, that dim awareness of Mark's hard-on, throbbing now. To his credit, Dexter actually paused for a moment at this demand. But then Mark pressed harder.

"Okay, okay, okay! She's a dirty old wetback cock-gobbling whore!"

he screamed.

"Buttfuck-loving, cock-gobbling whore."

"Buttfuck-loving, cock-gobbling whore! Please stop please stop please stop please stop please-"

And then Mark did let up. He removed his thumbs. He didn't get right up and off Dexter, though. He stayed where he was, staring down at the smaller boy, eyes half-lidded and predatory, hard-on throbbing against Dexter's stomach. Drunk on power, the power of might-makes-right and the dispensing of pain.

"Listen up, faggot. You ever tell anyone I did this to you, and I'll find you and tear your cock off. You think I'm kidding?"

Dexter couldn't speak. He was shivering, the throbbing in his cheeks wouldn't stop, it was almost as if Mark had never pulled those thumbs away. He shook his head no, and began to weep, big, long, ropy sobs. Mark looked down at him in disgust.

"Fucking pussy faggot."

A moment later the bully was gone. Dexter turned on his side and vomited into some of that good old Texas dirt. His cheeks were on fire. It took almost two days for the throbbing to die down completely and he couldn't eat right during that time.

It was Dexter's first brush with full-on gibbering terror, and it had left a mark. He had no doubt the bully would make good on any threat. Mark liked handing out a hurting. Handing out a hurting put some air in Mark's tire, put a little bit of bone in the old hot dog. Mark was evil. Dexter understood this. Kids don't look for shades of gray. Moral ambiguity is something that comes later, when they need to start justifying their own misdeeds. Mark was a monster, black and white, and Dexter took that at face value. So, hearing the boy say "kiss it, retard," was not a good sign, not a good sign at all.

In later years Dexter would wonder why, knowing this, he didn't just turn around on that tan Texas dirt and head right back to where the pavement began again, back up to the junction and the way that led to the park, the pool, and still being an eleven-year-old. He moved forward that day, toward the voice, filled with dread but unable to turn away.

Once through the first line of trees, a small clearing opened up. Dexter saw Mark there, standing above Jacob Littlefield. Jacob was older than either Mark or Dexter, almost seventeen, but Jacob was smaller than Mark and mentally slower than either of them. Dexter now understood that Mark's use of the word retard was not figurative. He was using the unkindest cut as a matter of course, an insult that Jacob had surely heard before and probably understood. Jacob was down on his hands and knees, and he was crying like a lost baby. He had a big round face and short cropped blond hair. His skin was milky white. Dexter had always thought privately that Jacob had the most beautiful skin he'd ever seen on another guy. Jacob was a sweet kid, always smiling, very trusting. His mom usually kept a close eye on him. Dexter wondered what the hell had happened.

Mark pointed at his right foot, which Dexter noticed was bare. It looked fugly and toe-jammed and altogether unappetizing.

"I said, kiss it, you stupid retarded fuckup. You drool enough already, you shouldn't have any problem working up the spit to clean up between my toes."

"But I don't wanna," Jacob blubbered. "Please don't make me."

Mark slapped the boy's face. Hard. Dexter heard the smack and shivered.

"Do what I tell you or I'm gonna beat the shit out of you, you fucking retard! You hear me?"

Mark slapped the boy again, and now Jacob was really bawling, full bore, the way a baby does, total abandon. Dexter watched with a mix of horror and fascination as Jacob bent forward and began to kiss and lick Mark's nasty foot.

Motherfuck was all that came to mind. Dexter didn't swear too often, but motherfuck was a versatile word. It just fit right in some places. This was one of them.

"That's right, retard, clean 'em up good."

Dexter recognized that look on Mark's face. Savage joy. He was just as certain that Mark had pitched a pup tent, as they liked to say during sleepovers. Its usual witticism seemed to fall flat here. Dexter's throat was dry and his mouth tasted like dust. He was witnessing the worst thing he'd ever seen in his life right now. He was sure of it. He was just as sure that he needed to get the fuck out of there. The motherfuck out of there. Otherwise, he was pretty certain he was going to find himself right down there on his hands and knees with Jacob, licking the toe-jam and grime from Mark's feet until they gleamed. But what about Jacob?

The thought came, of course. Dexter was a decent boy, after all. The answer followed, fast and shameful:

Sorry, Jacob. Sucks to be you.

Not noble, maybe, but even the thought of what Mark had done to him before made his bladder feel loose and jiggly. Jacob was on his own, which was a motherfuck, but that's the way it was going to have to be.

Dexter turned to go and that's when it happened. It was like something from a bad movie, the oldest cliche around: he stepped on a stick. It had been a dry summer, so the wood snapped like a firecracker. The thing about guys like Mark, Dexter would ponder later, their double whammy, was the singular lack of hesitation that having no moral code gave them. The stick cracked and Mark was on him in seconds. He heard the older boy's movements first and felt one of Mark's big, meaty hands grip his neck a moment later, all before Dexter could get the idea of run translated into motion.

"Well, lookee here," Mark chortled. "Looks like we got ourselves a regular retard convention going."

"Let me go, Mark," Dexter said, more from force of habit than out of any real hope that the older boy would listen. "I was just walking. I don't care what else is happening, I promise."

Mark squeezed a little harder and Dexter squirmed. It wasn't exactly pain, but it was the promise of it.

"I don't think so, fag," Mark said. "I'm having a little party here and I think you need to join in."

He turned without another word, still gripping Dexter around the neck, and marched them both back into the clearing. Jacob was still down on his hands and knees. He was shivering and blubbering. Dexter didn't wonder why the boy hadn't run away. Mark had probably said if he did he'd kill him. Better the foot slobbering in front of you than the unknown promise that kept you looking over your shoulder. All small kids who got bullied understood this logic. Mark let go of his neck by tossing him forward. Dexter stumbled and fell, landing at an odd angle on his wrist so that he couldn't catch his fall, only slow it. He ended up clipping his chin against the ground. His teeth clacked together so hard he felt it in his skull, like a brutal rap with a big wooden spoon.

"Get back to licking, retard," Mark commanded Jacob. Jacob kept sobbing, but his resistance had been broken. He went back to using his tongue to clean between Mark's filthy toes. Dexter brought himself to a sitting position and wiped his mouth. His teeth ached.

The sun was hot, but no longer in a good way; it was more surreal now. It kind of made Dexter feel like he was being baked alive. The noise of bugs and birds in the air had a sluggish feel to it. That bad dream syrup, it's everywhere. .

That's what Nana called the quality of those nightmares, the ones where you needed to run but felt like you were moving through mush. She called it bad dream syrup, and had pointed out to Dexter that the bad dream syrup had the habit of appearing at times when you were wide awake.

Mark turned a sleepy-eyed, lizard smile to Dexter. He was well pleased. This was it, for him, right here. Subjugation, degradation, power. Mark knew what he wanted and he wasn't conflicted about it.

"Listen up, faggot. You got a choice here. You can do what I tell you to do, or I'll give you some more of what I gave you those months back."

The words gave Dexter a chill. Sweat actually broke out on his forehead. His mouth went dry.

Whatever he wants, it can't be as bad as that was. Nothing could be that bad.

"Here's the deal. You're going to whip out your tiny little dick and you're going to make the retard suck on it. I want him to choke on that Oscar Mayer." Mark smiled, another lazy, happy, unconflicted smile. "He sucks and you come, fuckwit. No come, and you're getting the thumbs again." He wiggled said thumbs and grinned wider. Dexter would wonder, years later, how guys like Mark knew exactly where to stick the knife in so that it would hurt the most. It was an uncanny ability, like a shark smelling blood in the water. Dexter wasn't a perfect boy, but he tried to be a good boy. He had his moments of anger and selfishness, but up until that moment, he'd never done anything truly ugly. He'd never taken his rage out on someone weaker than him, he'd never harmed a defenseless animal, his lies were white and not big. Somehow, Mark knew this. He wanted to change this because he knew it would hurt Dexter a lot more than gobbling Mark's toe-jam or writhing under Mark's iron thumbs.

"And if I don't?"

"Keep licking, retard!" Mark snapped down at Jacob. He turned the sleepy gaze and the lizard smile back to Dexter. "I'll make you scream, fag-boy. I'll make you scream until you lose your fucking mind."

Dexter fought his fear. He allowed himself that truth, when he remembered this day in later years. He tried. But courage in the face of torture, he found out that day, was for comics, not eleven-year-old boys being offered a way out.

He stood up and walked over to where Mark was. He looked down at Jacob, who had stopped crying so much. He was still licking Mark's feet, which were starting to look pretty clean.

Good job! Dexter thought, on the edge of hysteria. Jacob stopped for a moment and looked up at Dexter. The boy really did have beautiful skin. He had the eyes of a child; big and trusting. He had snot running from his nose and his cheeks were tracked with tears.

"Now before you make him suck, I want you to slap his face,"

Mark said. The bully's voice was languid, lazy.

Don't do this, a voice in Dexter's head boomed. This is something, if you do, you can't undo.

Dexter couldn't take his eyes off Jacob's face. His round, stupid face. He felt anger rising, an irrational anger that said it was Jacob's fault that Dexter was in this position, that it was Jacob's fault that Dexter was being forced to do something so terrible. If you weren't such a fucking retard, you wouldn't be here and I wouldn't be here and I'd just be taking my walk on a great Saturday morning.

Rage rose in Dexter. He'd realize later that the rage was really just fear and shame come together.

He pulled his hand back. It hung in the air, trembling.

"Do it, fag," Mark goaded, gloating like a toad. Dexter was in hell.

He closed his eyes so he couldn't see Jacob's face anymore. He hugged the rage to him, hard, and brought his hand down.

23

"I SLAPPED THAT POOR BOY, AND I. . DID WHAT MARK TOLD me to do, and I watched as Mark threatened him after," the man on the video continues to read. "He told Jacob he'd kill him if he finked, and that afterward, he'd fuck Jacob's mom in the ass.

"That was the end of my childhood Saturdays. I tried waking up again in those quiet hours, but the cartoons seemed washed out, and the cinnamon toast never tasted as good.

"I never felt the same about myself after that. You have ideas about yourself, particularly as a child. Ideals. You assume that you'd be courageous when needed, that you'd make the right decision in a tough situation. Mark shattered that illusion for me. I realized that I was capable of harming, even raping, another person-a helpless person-to save my own skin. I wasn't heroic when the chips were down, and whatever else happens, I'll always know that about myself.

"I told Nana about what happened. I told her and I cried and she held me for a long time. She was quiet for a while, thinking through it in that way that she had. In the end she told me this: 'Everyone has a little bit of ugly in them. Remember yours the next time you think about judging theirs.'

"Nana was the only one who knew, until this year. I found a priest, a good man, who was willing to hear my confession. I talked, he listened, and then, miracle of miracles, he absolved me. He told me that God would forgive, and I believe him. God, I am finding, is not really the problem. I'm just not sure if I'm ready to forgive myself.

"But I'm trying. I really, really am."

The man puts the page down on the table in front of him and refolds his hands, thumb and forefinger still rubbing away at the rosary.

"So Dexter Reid revealed one secret to the world, his desire to be a woman. But he held one back, something even more shameful, perhaps. Certainly more shameful to him. As they say, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. Easy to say, difficult to do, necessary for salvation. Another example follows in the death of Rosemary Sonnenfeld."

The clip fades to black.

"Is the bad feeling I'm getting justified?" I ask Alan.

"Yeah."

"Go ahead."

He clicks the next clip. The lettering this time reads: The Death and Sin of Rosemary Sonnenfeld.

"Rosemary was a sinner's sinner," the man intones. He doesn't sound especially judgmental about it. Just telling it like it is. "She spent her youth having sex indiscriminately and for money, embroiled in drugs and perversion. At her lowest point she accepted God into her life and confessed her past to Him. She revealed her secrets and tried to walk a righteous path. But, as with Dexter, she had a second secret, a deeper sin. Observe."

The clip cuts to a woman, her face hovering above a pile of cocaine, straw in hand. She's naked and shaking. The sound of her snorting coincides with the pile getting noticeably smaller. I recognize the woman as Rosemary.

"Again," a voice commands. It's the man who's been narrating the clips so far.

Rosemary looks up. Her eyes are a little unfocused, but I can see the fear in them.

"If I keep snorting, I'll die," she says.

"Indeed," the man replies. "But if you don't, I'll shoot off your kneecaps and cut off your breasts. You'll still die, but it will be far more painful." A pause. "So, again."

A look of resignation crosses her face. She bends over the pile and takes a huge snort. It seems to go on forever. The straw falls from her fingers, and her head snaps back, eyes fluttering, hair trailing down her back. It's a kind of hideous art, the aesthetics of death and death to come.

"Lay back now," the man says, his voice soothing. "Lay back, my child."

A gloved hand comes into view and he pushes her shivering, shaking body back onto the bed. She's smiling, biting her lower lip. Fine drops of sweat bead her brow. She's the picture of a woman in the throes of something ecstatic and wonderful. She clenches her upper thighs together again and again, as though she's fighting an orgasm.

"Tell us about Dylan, Rosemary."

The clenching stops and she seems to find some focus. She frowns and then shudders. She's started to sweat.

"H-how d-do you know. .? H-how? Only told people at my. ."

"I know, Rosemary," he interrupts. "You're dying. Go to meet God with the truth on your lips. Tell us about Dylan. He was your brother, wasn't he?"

"Y-yes. Brother. Beautiful brother."

"How old was Dylan?"

She spasms once and she closes her eyes.

"Thirteen," she hisses.

"And how old were you?"

"Fifteen fifteen fif-fif-fifteen," she says in a singsong.

"Tell us, Rosemary. Tell us, tell them, tell God, what it was you did to beautiful Dylan."

A long pause, and now she's really trembling. Her breathing is getting shallower and faster. Not much time now, I think.

"I came into his bed one night and I sucked his cock!" she crows.

"Sucked him and he couldn't help but let me. And then I got him hard again and fucked him."

"And what happened the next day, Rosemary?"

Silence. Spasms. Sweat.

"What happened the next day?"

She shakes her head back and forth, back and forth.

"No no no no no no no."

"God is love, Rosemary."

These words bring a change upon her that I don't quite understand. She begins to weep.

"He killed himself. He went into the bathroom and cut his wrists and he didn't leave a note because he knew I'd know why. No one else ever knew, not Mom, not Dad, but I knew I knew I knew. The evil hungry in me had killed sweet Dylan, had made him do bad against his will, had eaten him alive. The evil hungry had killed him dead."

I grimace at the pain in her voice, and at the idea of someone having a name for something about themselves that they despised. The evil hungry.

"Very good, Rosemary," the man says, and I'm surprised at the depth of compassion apparent in his voice. He actually seems to care.

"I'm going to give you peace now, I'm going to send you home to God. Would you like that?"

She begins to recite the Lord's Prayer.

"Our Father, Who art in heaven."

A long, metal rod with a sharp and pointed end appears in the camera view.

"Hallowed be Thy name," he answers.

The film cuts back to the man seated at the table. Just as well. I know what happened next. He stuck her in the side, angled the point up and into her heart, delivering the quick death he'd promised.

"Again, you see? One secret, revealed, hides the other, unrevealed. Truth is not a striving, it is an immediate arrival."

For the first time, his body language changes. He places the rosary to one side of the table and lays his palms flat on the surface.

"I have spent my life building up to this moment, preparing for this reveal. I haven't done this for myself. I haven't done this because I enjoy killing."

"Right," Callie says, sardonic.

"I have taken this time to build an absolute, airtight, irrefutable case for truth. Because the most basic truth is this: live with lies, live in sin, and you will deny yourself the fruits of heaven. Live with the truth, confess your sins, hold nothing back, and you will sit at the right hand of God when you die. It is that simple. It requires no debate or endless figuring. What it does require is operation at the level of an absolute.

"We love our little sins. The secrets we hold for ourselves, sometimes they are the only things we have that we can truly call our own. I understand this. I know life can be hard. The mother who is working three jobs and raising four children on her own sneaks off for an hour affair with a married man. It gives her a rush of life and excitement and a stolen, momentary sense of freedom that perhaps she feels she might die without. Sin can be as water in the desert sometimes.

"The truth remains: she can work those jobs, raise her children well, live a life that is otherwise clear of wrongfulness, but if she dies without full and unfettered confession of that sin, she will not arrive in heaven.

"So ask yourself: are those stolen moments worth an eternity?

"I have spent two decades killing, not for the thrill of it, but so that I could arrive here and now and share with you the truth of what I have seen. I selected my sacrifices carefully, as you will see. Each had a secret, a darkness, something they could not reveal. All now sit at the right hand of God and enjoy the wonders of heaven. In the end, they gave their lives so that you could understand. Not willing martyrs, but martyrs nonetheless.

"I am no messiah. There has been only one messiah-Jesus Christ, the son of God. But I humbly submit that I am a prophet for the modern age. We are living in times that are drenched in sin. Godlessness is almost a given. If you are watching this, listening to what I say, then it's time to wake up. There is good and there is evil. There is a God. There is a heaven and there is a hell. The road to heaven is a road of absolute truth. The road to hell is a road of lies, of non-revelation, of holding tight to those treasured secrets. Which road will you take?

"If you choose the road to heaven, then watch the rest of my movies, and listen. Perhaps you'll see your own sin revealed by others. Perhaps you'll come to terms with that great and simple truth: the worst thing that you have done can still be forgiven by God. You just have to ask him.

"Twenty years ago, I realized that sharing this truth with the world was what God had called on me to do. Sin is omnipresent. We begin to sin from the moment we are born. But if you are watching this, understand: you can be saved, so long as you admit all to God and hold back nothing for yourself.

"Some will ask how I can justify murder. I answer simply that murder is not what has happened on these video clips. Sacrifice is what has happened. They confessed their sins to me, they were contrite, and thus all will have been allowed into heaven. Consider the facts-many in history have said before what I am saying now. Yet people do not listen. They continue to clutch their secrets close. They hear the words, but they do not feel them in their hearts.

"Words, it seems, are not enough. Man, it appears, needs to see his fellows weep, and bleed, and die. He needs to hear the dark secrets of others, to realize, perhaps, that he is not alone, that others have done terrible things as well. Those I sacrificed were given up to God so that I could make certain, this time, that you would listen and hear and feel this primary truth: be honest with God and achieve eternal salvation; hold back the smallest thing and burn in hellfire forever."

These last words had come out in a rush, a quiet thunder, passionate. This is it, I think. Why he does what he does. Or at least, why he thinks he does what he does.

He's been building a case for truth before God. The deaths were necessary to proving this ideal and were justified by the potential salvation of others who'd watch and learn the lessons he was trying to teach. He didn't have to feel guilty. They'd confessed, right? That meant he was sending them to a better place. Heck, he was doing them a favor.

What a crock of shit. What about Ambrose? How had he justified killing him?

Psychotics, however brilliant, will always have blind spots. Their systems of rationalization, however logical at first glance, can never hide the basic motivation: they enjoy the suffering and death of others. He picks up the rosary again, and begins rubbing the beads.

"I offer myself as a final demonstration of the tenets I espouse. To the members of law enforcement who will watch this: everything you need to know to find me is on these and the other tapes. Everything. But you will have to be clear-minded. You will have to have the ability to see the truth. Practice what I preach and you will find me standing right in front of you. Hold on to your lies, keep the veil over your eyes, and it will take you that much longer. In this case, time is life, Officers and Agents.

"I am not done. I have names on a list, and I have put things into motion to bring them first to me and then to the right hand of God. I will kill again in the next two days, and this time, it will be a child."

"Shit," Alan breathes.

That frozen moment again. The world stops turning, the cicadas return. I have no doubt that he's telling us the truth, even less that he'll keep his promise.

"That's all for now. I realize in this day and age I'll be given a nom de plume of some kind. I don't want someone's clever creation to distract from the purpose of my message. So let's agree to keep it simple: you can call me the Preacher."

Fade to black.

Everyone's quiet.

"The Preacher," Callie finally says, with a little bit of a sneer.

"What an overblown ego."

"Rosemary said she 'only told the people in my. .' In her what?"

I ask.

"Church?" Alan posits.

I frown. "That wouldn't make much sense. Did you see her face?

Zero recognition. She had no idea who this guy was. It's a small church, with a tight-knit congregation."

"Puts Father Yates in the clear," Alan points out. "But how about a support group?"

"What, like Coke Fiends Anonymous?" Callie asks.

"It'd be a bigger collection of people. Harder to remember a face that way."

"It's a thought," I agree.

"Shitty thought." Alan sighs. "I've had to follow leads into groups like that before. It sucks. They take the 'anonymous' idea pretty seriously."

"Still, let's keep it in mind. What about the rest of the clips?"

"I haven't viewed any past this last one," he says, "but it looks like he's been true to his word. There are another six clips or so on this page, and then. ." He clicks on a link that says Next Page and a new page loads into the browser, filled with thumbnails of clips. "If you look, you'll see that the information on each clip includes the author. These are all him."

I lean forward and sure enough I see Author: The Preacher below each thumbnail. I examine the thumbnails themselves. They are a mix of images. Some simply have a black screen, others have the now familiar white lettering he uses for his "opening credits." Some show women, young and old. Some look dead, some appear terrified, a few have gags tied around their mouths. There's no recognizable victim type here.

"How many thumbnails to a page?" I ask.

"Ten rows of five," Alan replies.

"How many pages?" I dread the answer.

"Almost three."

"So if each is a separate victim," Callie muses, "then the numbers on the crosses he left in Lisa Reid and Rosemary Sonnenfeld were a body count, after all."

"There's another problem," Alan says. He navigates back to the front page of the religious section of the website. "These make it to the front page based on popularity. In other words, the number of times they're viewed."

"Great," I mutter. "And I'll assume that there's an overall popularity index too, right?"

He nods. "If these are viewed enough, they'll end up not just on page one of the religion category, but page one of the website itself."

"Someone will make the connection with the Reid name soon,"

James observes. "Not to mention his threat to kill a child. This is going to hit the news."

The anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach widens into a chasm.

"This is going to turn into a shit storm," I say. "We need to try and get ahead of it." I begin pacing, talking out loud to organize my thoughts. "The media is going to splash the story and then we're going to start getting calls from all over about the victims. The fact that he's kept himself hidden until now probably means that most of his victims are unsolved disappearances. That's potentially a lot of families that will be clamoring for confirmation."

"Good Lord," Callie says, now really seeing the truth of what I'm saying. "Those poor people will be crawling out of the woodwork."

"Them and the crazies," Alan observes.

High-profile murders, particularly those that garner media attention, call forth the loonies like throwing meat in front of a hungry dog. People line up to confess. The more unusual the crime, the longer the line. I rub my forehead, still pacing.

"We need to get the clips pulled," I say.

"Yes," Callie agrees.

"Wait a moment," James says, and begins typing in website addresses, one after the other, each in a new browser window. He leans back after a moment, shaking his head. "I thought so."

"What?" I ask.

"The key term here is viral, " he replies. "User-tube is the most popular site for the sharing of video clips, but it's far from the only one. I typed in the URLs for ten others. See for yourself."

We all lean forward as he cycles through the various browser windows he's opened. Each one is filled with rows of video-clip thumbnails.

"This is. .?" I ask.

He nods. "The Preacher's clips. Re-posted by users to other similar websites around the world." A shrug. "The feeding frenzy starts a lot faster on the Web."

Alan rubs his face with both hands. "Holy fuuuuuuck."

"So what?" I ask. "You're telling me it doesn't matter if we get them pulled from user-tube?"

"No. User-tube is the most popular video-sharing site on the Internet. Getting them pulled will make an immediate difference, but it won't stop them from spreading. It'll only lessen their visibility."

"How's that?" Alan asks.

James shrugs. "The clips are everywhere now, including people's hard drives. They'll be burned onto CDs and DVDs, viewers will e-mail them to each other, share them on forums and newsgroups. There are a ton of video-sharing sites that are run outside the U.S. Most won't listen to a word we say. Even some of the ones run from within the states will resist removing the clips without a court order. Then there's the hierarchy of user-tube itself. All the content is user provided. For every clip we pull, someone else will probably repost it, in the name of free speech or voyeurism. It's the perfect medium for the Preacher, really."

Alan throws up his hands in disgust. "What the fuck should we do, then?"

"Get them pulled. We'll have Computer Crimes liaise with usertube and monitor any attempts by the Preacher to post future clips. They'll intercept them and let us know. We'll also have Computer Crimes contact the other video-sharing sites that we know will be cooperative. Beyond that. ." He shakes his head. "The main thing you have to understand and accept is this: the clips are out there. That ship has sailed. Families are going to see them and there's nothing we can do about that."

I stare at him for a moment, blinking. "I have to call the AD," I say.

"We're going to need additional personnel."

James nods. "A task force."

"Yes."

Alan groans. "Great. Bunch of newbies tripping over their own feet and trying to steal my desk."

"We'll use them primarily to field the phones and to help collate information. Following up any leads-and the primary investigation-

remains with us."

"They do the grunt work, we get the glory." Callie nods her approval. "I like it."

"First things first," I tell them. "We need to watch these clips. He told us the names of Dexter and Rosemary. Maybe he followed the same formula throughout. We need to make a list and then start searching the databases for similar crimes nationwide."

"Look for commonalities of location," James provides. "Hopefully he'll give us some clues in that regard that will help us identify the victims and narrow down our geographical target area." He looks at me.

"We're going to end up sending this victim list out to local police municipalities. If we can reduce the radius, it will help."

"Good thinking. Divide up the clips. I'll take the last set and start viewing once I've called AD Jones and Rosario Reid."

Alan grimaces. "Think she knew? About what her son had done to that kid Jacob?"

I feel tired and rumpled and half put together and far, far too electrified at the same time.

"No. Let's get to work."

24

"SWEET JESUS," AD JONES SWEARS AND THEN FALLS SILENT. I wait him out. "This is going to be everywhere," he says.

"Already is, sir."

I had called him on his cell phone. It's always on.

"Do we have any idea at all who the kid he's promised to kill might be?"

"No, sir."

More silence.

"Have you spoken to Rosario?"

"Not yet, sir. I called you first. But I will."

"This is going to be hard on them." He sighs. "I suppose you want a task force?"

"We're going to need the extra manpower, sir. Once this gets out past the Internet, to the mainstream media, the families are going to need a number to call. If we can't prevent the media from doing its thing-and we can't-then we can use it to our benefit."

"Agreed. You'll need someone who's done this kind of thing before, who can hit the ground running."

"Any ideas?"

"There's an agent working in public affairs who's run a phone bank before. Jezebel Smith."

"Jezebel? Really?"

"Yeah, I know. The religious references are running wild on this one. She's been on the job for about eight years and she's a selfstarter. We used her on the '07 terror scare. People were calling in sightings of al Qaeda from a hundred miles around. Total bullshit and a waste of time, but she did a good job of sorting out the wheat from the chaff."

"At least she's not a newbie. I imagine the agents we use to man the phones will be a bunch of greenie-weenies?"

" 'Fraid so. What else do you need?"

"Do you want me to call the Director?"

"Yeah, but I won't make you do it. I'll deal with him and I'll make sure he knows to call me and not you. We'll need his resources to help deal with the media."

"Thanks."

"Better get rolling, Smoky. I'll round up Agent Smith when I get in and send her to see you. Should be within the next hour. Call Rosario Reid."

"Yes, sir."

He hangs up and I take a moment to procrastinate. I don't want to call Rosario, I really don't. I hate having nothing but bad news to give to the survivors.

"Suck it up," I tell myself.

I dial the cell number she'd given me. She picks up after just three rings.

"Smoky?"

"Hi, Rosario."

"It's bad news, isn't it?" No hesitation. This makes it a little easier for me, that she's expecting it. Not a lot easier, but a little.

"Very bad."

Again, no hesitation. Her voice is firm. "Tell me."

So I do. I explain about the Preacher, the video clips, and the pages he'd torn from Lisa's journal. She is silent throughout and after I am done.

"I remember Jacob Littlefield," she says. "A sweet boy. And I remember Mark Phillips too. A little monster who grew into a big one. He was in jail by the time he was twenty. Poor Dexter. My poor, poor son."

Her voice cracks, the first time I've heard it do so. This is how loss hits us sometimes, I know, by making an irrelevance of time. She hadn't lost her composure when her child was murdered, but she loses it now, thinking of her young son and the death of his Saturday mornings.

"Are we any closer to knowing who this monster is?" she asks after a moment.

"Yes, in the broader sense. He's provided us with video recordings of his earlier victims. The more data we have, the greater the odds that we'll catch him."

"Why would he do this? Why would he tell Lisa's secret to the world? Wasn't it enough to murder her?"

She wants to understand, and I try to help her, though I know it won't give her any comfort.

"It's always about power, Rosario. Power over life and death and all the components thereof. I can't give you an exact picture of his motives, not yet, but the short answer is-no, murdering her wasn't enough. He wants to feel in control of everything that was the most personal, the most private, the most guarded. That's sex for him. Great sex."

"And his speech about 'truth' and God?" Her voice quivers with distaste.

"He believes that he believes. I'm sure of that. But he's insane, so he misses the real truth."

"Which is?"

"He tells himself his joy comes from using the deaths to forward a purpose. The real truth, the ugly bottom line, is that the deaths are the only purpose he needs."

She is silent for a moment. "How do you know something like that?"

I consider the question. It's not the first time I've been asked it.

"I guess I let myself feel what they feel."

More silence.

"And what is he feeling right now? This monster that killed my baby?"

"Joy," I reply without hesitation. "Joy at its apex."

When she speaks again, her voice is rough and husky. "I want him to feel agony, Smoky, not joy."

"I know. All I can do is catch him."

"Don't worry about me or how this getting out will affect my family. It will be difficult, but we'll deal with it. Concentrate on finding this. . thing. Please."

"I will."

ALAN HOLDS UP A SHEET of paper as I walk back into the office.

"He's giving us the names in every case," he says. "Some of these go back a long way, I'm thinking up to twenty years based on the clothes, hair, stuff like that."

"It's all the same basic format too," Callie says. "He gets them to admit to a deep, dark secret and then makes it clear he's going to kill them."

"But each clip ends before the actual death," James notes.

"Strange," I murmur. "You'd think the moment of death would be more important than that to him."

"Perhaps it's a part of his rationalization framework," James says.

"He's telling us, and himself, that he's doing what he's doing to forward a concept of truth that brings one closest to God. He's trying to share this truth with the world so that others can be saved. Showing the murder, perhaps he feels it would make him look voyeuristic."

"I bet he did film the murders, every one of them," Alan says. "He just didn't include them in the clips. He probably sits at home and jacks off to them regularly."

"I don't know," I say. "I think he'll be into self-repression. The holy man who resists his own vices successfully, that kind of thing. That fits with the identity paradigm he's trying to assert to us. Let's keep going through the clips and noting the names. If he's willing to give them to us, let's use them."

I fill them in on Jezebel Smith and the rest of my conversation with AD Jones.

Alan checks his watch. "We should be seeing her soon. She'll be setting up the number?"

He's referring to the tip-line phone number that we'll be putting out.

"Yes. She'll run that whole show-and knows how to, apparently. Anything else?"

No one says a word.

"Then let's keep at it."

Moments later I am back in my office. James had downloaded all of the clips, and split them up between us. I pop in the CD he'd given me. The clips are in number order, four digits each. I sigh and click on the first one. I watch as the black screen appears, followed by the white letters: The Sins and Death of Maxine McGee. I note the name down on the pad. A woman's face appears. It's a pretty face, though not a beautiful one. She's got brown, shoulder-length hair, and it's feathered in a style that tells me this was probably shot in the 1980s. She has big brown eyes and her face is just short of chubby. Those brown eyes are surrounded by black, the eyes of a raccoon, because she's sobbing and terrified and her mascara has turned her tears to dirt.

I note down her physical characteristics next to her name. I try and use this to distance myself from the fact of what I'm seeing. This is a woman who once was alive and now is dead. She's living her last moments, she knows it, I'm watching it. It makes me tired.

"Maxine McGee," the Preacher says, in that pleasant voice I'm growing to hate. "Tell the people watching about your sin."

Maxine can't stop sobbing.

"W-w-what are you talking about?" she blubbers.

"Maxine." The voice has a chiding tone, the verbal equivalent of a friendly but cautionary finger wag. "Don't you want to sit at the right hand of God? Tell them about your baby. Tell them about little Charles. How old were you then? Sixteen?"

The change in her demeanor is instant and amazing. Her eyes go wide, her tears quit, and her mouth drops open. She's become a caricature of shock and surprise.

"You see? You do know what I'm talking about."

That chasm of unease in my stomach has opened back up. Maxine blinks rapidly. Her mouth closes, opens again. Closes. She looks like a dying guppy.

"Come, Maxine. Charles. You remember Charles, don't you? Little baby Charles, who gasped his last in an alley trash can, thrown away like garbage."

The expression that passes over Maxine's face horrifies me. It is violation, so deep and so profound, so absolute and authentic, that I almost stop the clip right there. He's hurt her by knowing this and by showing her he knows. He's slipped past her most entrenched defenses, and this is worse than being tied to a chair, maybe even worse than knowing she's going to die.

This, I realize, this right here, is what he craves. That moment of abjectness.

She begins to cry again, but it's a slower, deeper grief. This is shame, not fear. Her head hangs forward and those black, dirt-tears patter onto her naked legs, staining them.

"I was only sixteen," she says in a small voice. She sounds sixteen saying it.

"True," he says. "But then, how old was baby Charles?"

"Minutes," she breathes. "He was just a few minutes old."

"What did you do with him?"

"I–I was only sixteen. I got pregnant from Daddy. He and Mom pretended not to notice. I was skinny and my stomach didn't get that big, but kids at school noticed. It didn't keep Daddy from coming to see me at night." She's lifted her head back up. She's staring off, remembering. She's regressed and speaks with the voice of a child. "I hated the thing inside me. It came from Daddy being with me and I remember thinking it was like having a devil in me, a demon. A creature, growing, with fangs and claws. It would move sometimes and I'd start to shake. I was so afraid of it. Toward the end, Daddy stopped pretending it wasn't there. He touched my stomach one time and he said, 'If it's a boy, we'll call him Charles.' " She shudders. "That made me hate the baby even more. I was sure it was the son of Satan or something.

"I woke up one night and my bed was wet. My water had broken. I was in a lot of pain. One thing I knew for sure was I didn't want to have it there, at home. So I got dressed and I took Daddy's car and I drove out to where all the abandoned factories were. I found a place in the dark so I wouldn't have to see him when he came out, with his fangs and his tail and his claws."

She stops. Her face twists in pain.

"What happened then, Maxine?" the voice asks.

"I had him. He was born. He just laid there on the dirt and I was kind of out of it, but I knew one thing, I was scared. I didn't want to look at him. And then-he cried." I hear wonder in her voice. "He sounded so normal. Not like a demon at all. He sounded like a baby. So I looked at him and he was so small and he was just crying and crying like he was mad at me and mad at the dirt being cold and just mad at the world. He had my blood on him and I just grabbed him and really looked."

"And what did you see, Maxine?"

She closes her eyes. "I saw a baby. Just a baby."

"And? What else did you see?"

Her eyes open. They're filled with endurance, a pain at its purest.

"That he'd belong to Daddy. Daddy would use him up somehow, would infect him or abuse him. He wasn't born a demon, but Daddy was the devil, and Daddy would turn him evil in the end. So I did"-

she draws in a single, whooping breath-"I did the only thing that I thought it was right to do. I took Charles and I found a trash can and I put him down in it, and I covered him with garbage until I couldn't hear him crying anymore."

"What happened after?"

"I went home. And you know what?" Her eyes look toward the camera now. They're full of pleading. "Daddy never asked what happened to the baby. Never, not once."

"It was worse that your mother didn't ask, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she whispers, "that was the worst of all. It was like he never existed for them, and maybe he never did. Maybe they were those kind of people, able to live without feeling guilt or worrying about anyone else, ever."

"You weren't 'those kind of people,' were you, Maxine?"

She squeezes her mascara-ringed eyes shut again and wails. "No!

I never forgot. Never! I ran away a year later and came here to California. I whored for a while, did some drugs, and hated myself. But-but then I found God, and I turned my life around." The eyes open, again, suffering, again. "Don't you know that? I changed. I got away from my devil and I gave my soul to God. I work with children now, I help them, all to make up for what I did to Charles. Don't you see that?"

She's asking for mercy, but the murmuring I can make out tells me what I already know: he had none to offer. The murmur is his beginning recitation of the Lord's Prayer.

"Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. ." Then a pause. "God is love, Maxine," he says.

Fade to black.

My mouth has filled with bile. Adrenaline races through me and makes my heart jitter and skip beats. My skin feels flushed. I'm dizzy. I'm flying apart, I realize. Right here, right now, with no warning at all.

I feel a cackling thing running through the night in my mind, scrabbling at great speed to try and jump from the darkness into the light.

See me, it cackles and snarls and growls. You know what I am. See me.

I clench my eyes shut and shake my head.

No no no no no!

The phantom from the night is back, grown to a monster this time, and he's caught me by surprise.

I find myself longing for that bottle of tequila, longing for it with a level of savage naked need that terrifies me. This, I realize, is what drives the alcoholic to his next drink. The feeling that if he doesn't, he'll die a long, lingering, screaming, painful death. I hold out my hand, palm down over my desktop. It's shaking. See me, the voice demands again, more strident and certain this time. No question, all command.

I feel nausea rising inside me. I realize it's going to keep coming, I can't fight it back.

Jesus Christ, I'm going to puke!

I bolt from my office and race to the bathroom in the hall. The door can't be locked, but no one else is in it, thank God. I fling the door to one of the three stalls open and I drop to my knees on the tile without ceremony. My gorge rises and my stomach twists and a brief, sweet pain spikes through my head and I'm puking my guts out in the next millisecond. It's brief, but it's violent. I can feel how flushed my face is, and the force of it all squeezes tears from my eyes. I grip the sides of the toilet bowl and wait to see if it's over. See me.

I'm twisting like a rope in a pair of strong sailor's hands, bending like a violin bow, muscles spasming as I vomit again. It goes on a little too long, and puts spots behind my eyes.

This time I know I'm done and I fall into a sitting position, back against the wall of the toilet stall. I sit there for a moment and breathe, hand against my forehead, working to stuff the monster and his claws back into the box.

Now is not the time, I tell myself. There is a time, but it's not now. Please.

I close my eyes and lay my head back against the stall wall and let myself drift. Time goes by in internal fuzzy flashes. Pictures come to me. They're all unrelated, jumbled, no rhyme or reason. I see Matt, I see Bonnie, there's Tommy telling me he loves me, and there's Maxine with her raccoon eyes.

I open my eyes again and find that the voice is gone. I take advantage of the lull to stand back up on wobbly legs. I flush the toilet, and as I do, I realize that tears are running down my face.

"Goddammit," I mutter.

I hate crying, always have.

I seem to be a little more stable now. My stomach has stopped flipflopping, and the yammering in my head has died down to a background whisper. My mouth, however, is filled with the acrid taste of vomit. I open the door to the stall and totter out.

"Better?"

I'm so surprised that I almost draw my weapon. I whirl on the voice and nearly fall over doing so, as my legs remain a little rubbery. Kirby is standing there, arms crossed, leaning against the door to the bathroom. She's chewing gum and is staring at me with a look I can't quite fathom.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

"I was making sure no one came in while you were falling apart."

She shrugs. "I came up to see Callie and watched you run into the bathroom. Got curious."

I turn to the sink so I don't have to look at her. I turn on the water.

"I wasn't falling apart," I say, defensive.

She cracks her gum. "If you say so. But you were sitting in that stall for almost twenty minutes."

I stand up straight, shocked.

Twenty minutes? That long?

I sneak a look at Kirby. She's just standing there, chewing her gum. Her expression is a mix of the patient and the bland. She seems to read my mind and holds up a wrist to show me her watch.

"I checked the time."

I turn away again and splash water on my cheeks, which are now burning with embarrassment.

"And what the fuck is it to you?" I snarl.

"Well, I don't respect too many people in this world, Smoky, but I do respect you. And I figure if you need to fall apart, then you deserve some privacy while you do it, you know?"

She says all of this with that same careless, happy-go-lucky tone she uses to talk about the weather or the dead.

La-di-dah, how about this heat? Sorry I have to kill you, but it could be worse, it could be slow instead of quick, you know?! Ha ha ha! Blam!

I rinse out my mouth enough to clear the taste of puke away and spend a moment taking stock of myself in the mirror. I look tired but I don't look crazy. That's something, at least.

"Thanks," I manage.

"You're welcome."

I stare at myself one final time.

Secrets.

You can even keep them from yourself. Just not forever.

BACK AT DEATH CENTRAL I find a woman waiting for me. She's very tall, about six foot, and, unbelievably, could give Callie a run for her money in the beauty department. She's probably close to thirty-two, with long, straight, blonde hair and one of those fresh-scrubbed apples and oatmeal complexions. She has clear, intelligent blue eyes and a slim, athletic body. I want to hate her on sight, but then she smiles. It's not the perfect white teeth that disarm me, but the genuine openness of the grin. She holds out a hand.

"Jezebel Smith," she says.

I shake her hand and ignore Kirby's chortling behind me. Jezebel nods to Kirby, unfazed. "Yeah, I know, it's some namesake. Mom was kind of an anti-fundamentalist, so. ."

"Hey, my dad named me Kirby, so I know how that can be. There should be a law against parents naming kids whatever they darn well feel like, you know?"

"Amen." Jezebel smiles.

"Kirby-" I say, turning toward her.

The assassin holds up her hands. "Say no more, boss woman. I'll let you get back to what you're doing. I just need to see Callie-babe about some wedding stuff."

She saunters off after giving Jezebel a final wink and wave.

"Interesting woman," Jezebel muses.

"You don't know the half of it, and don't want to know the rest. So did AD Jones fill you in?"

She nods, grave.

"Can I see one of the clips?" she asks. "I like to know what I'm a part of."

I don't ask her if she's sure or if she's seen this kind of thing before. If she has, the question will insult her. If she hasn't, she won't be prepared anyway. I take her to my office and I bring up a random clip. I look away as it plays. Jezebel bends over to watch. She's silent throughout.

"Monster" is all she says when it's done.

"Yes."

"I deal with the victims regularly, doing what I do. I see them, talk with them-I've sat with them in their homes. This, what he's doing, is going to hurt a lot of families."

"He knows that."

She straightens up. "Okay. So, I will set up a phone bank in the conference room on the floor just below this. I'll man it with six agents-I'd like more, but that's all that AD Jones can spare for now. We have a set of phone numbers reserved for tip-line situations like this one. I'll choose a number and let you know what it will be. I know the woman at HQ who is going to be the contact for media inquiry on this, so I'll arrange with her how we go about getting that number out."

"We should take a proactive approach on this," I say. "Get ahead of the media."

Her smile is gentle. "Trust me. They're already way ahead of us on this one. I can guarantee you that media outlets all over the country have already been contacted. Think of it like a tsunami: it's coming, it's inevitable, and resistance is most definitely futile."

"Swell."

"The good news is, I'm really, really good at what I do. And so are the people that will be working on this at headquarters. You shouldn't have to deal with the media at all except to refer them to me. My team will filter all the calls that come through the tip line. You'll only get real leads."

Her confidence is inspiring. I scribble my cell number on a Post-it and hand it to her.

"Call me with updates, please. I'll be asked for regular reports-I'm sure you know the game."

"I'm familiar with shit and the way it rolls," she says with a grin. The smile fades. "Let's get this guy."

It would be more melodramatic if it weren't exactly the right sentiment.

25

JEZEBEL'S METAPHOR ABOUT THE TSUNAMI HAD BEEN ACCUrate. The tidal wave hits at around two o'clock in the afternoon. I've been continuing to watch my assigned helping of video clips. We all are. It's quiet in the offices, but the air is thick with anxiety and the need to find him before he carries out his promise. I'm noting the name of a particularly terrified brunette woman when my phone rings.

"The story is hitting the five o'clock news everywhere," Jezebel says without preamble. "And it's already five on the East Coast."

"What are they saying?"

"That a guy calling himself the Preacher has posted video clips on the Internet of purported murder victims. That they've been able to confirm the identities of two of the victims already."

"Great."

"We knew it was going to happen, and we're ready. I've been in contact with the media relations director at Quantico and she'll be doing a press conference within the next half hour. That will be picked up nationwide and she'll announce the tip-line number then."

"Can you get me the names of the two confirmed victims soonest?"

"Within the next half hour. Do you want to see the press conference?"

"Nope."

"Really?"

"It's not that it's not important, it's just not my part of this. My team and I need to stay on identifying the victims. It's the best thing we can do right now."

"I understand. I'll get you those names and will keep you updated. I expect the tip line to go crazy in the next few hours."

"I'll be here."

I put down the phone, pick my pen back up, and click to continue the clip I was watching.

"Please," she begs.

Please, please, it's always please. The one-word lyric of the victim's song.

ALAN IS AT THE DRY-ERASE board, writing down names and, where known, locations. I hand my list to him and take a moment to examine the data we've collected so far.

"All women," I say.

"A sexual link after all," Callie notes.

She's right. If this was all just about truth and his opus on the subject, we'd see some men in there. He probably has no awareness of this, and would be surprised if it was pointed out to him. Murder is murder and it's always an act of anger. The anger could be direct-he hates women-or it could be misplaced-he hates himself because of something that involves women. It's intriguing.

"Common age?" I ask.

"We don't know for sure without actual confirmation of their identities, but based on physical observation, I don't see anyone older than the age of thirty-five. Most are younger than that."

"How much younger?"

"All adults. Twenty or older. If he does kill a child, it looks like it would be a first for him."

"Were all the victims attractive? No, scratch that. Not all the women I saw were classically beautiful. Some were pretty plain."

"I can confirm that as well." James nods. "One of the women in my group was obese. Another had a bad case of acne. Appearance is not a crucial part of his criteria."

"But gender is," I muse. "Okay. How about locations? How spread out has he been?"

"I'm getting a map printed out so that we can see it graphically,"

Callie says. "He's been a traveler, but with few exceptions so far, he's stayed within the western United States, primarily California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado."

"Interesting. So Virginia was well outside his common stomping grounds."

Callie nods. "None of the other victims have been linked that far east."

A thought occurs to me. "No other transgendered victims?"

"No," James says.

"So Lisa Reid was another anomaly. She's the only transgender victim and the only one found so far outside his normal killing zone. Which means that's exactly why she was chosen."

"He's decided to come out into the open," Alan agrees. "He figured she'd help him make the biggest splash. Killing a child, same thing."

"Why now?" I wonder. No one answers. "What other commonalities?"

"He stops the clip before the actual murder of every victim," James says. "As discussed before, he's showing us that his overall message is more important to him than the deaths themselves. The murders were committed for a purpose, not titillation."

"He cared for them, or wants us to think he did," I say. "In one way he strips them naked-the whole secrets thing. But then he pulls the curtain over their last moments. He respects that privacy, preserves their dignity."

"He never gets angry," James notes. "He's firm, but calm with every victim. He's not above threatening them to gain compliance, but it's detached. A means to an end, not a fantasy."

"I take it the secrets theme has been consistent?"

" 'Fraid so," Callie says, "and not just in fact but in form."

I frown. "Sorry?"

"She means there haven't been any 'I stole twenty bucks from Mom's wallet' kind of secrets," Alan provides. "It's all dark or twisted or sad or all three." He consults notepad Ned. "Lot of it has a sexual component, of course. There's some accidental murders that were then hidden, but there are a few premeditated killings in there as well. One woman had been beaten by her husband for years, so she took it out on her baby. With lit cigarettes." He looks back up at me wearing a humorless smile. "A ghastly fucking gallery."

My stomach twists once and I feel that voice again, not vocalizing yet, but stirring. Thinking about making itself known. I push it away and force myself to focus on the list of names and what they can tell me.

"He videoed every crime, obviously," James says, "but the changes in video and sound quality show us that he's been at this for some time. He probably started out on super eight or a similar medium and graduated up to better technology as the years rolled on. He'll be fairly proficient technically, nothing earth-shaking, but more knowledgeable than the average computer user. He'd have to be to digitize old mediums and to create the various video clips, edit them, and so on."

"It gives him credibility," Callie observes, her tone grudging. "He's been documenting his actions from the start, waiting for the day he'd bring his 'case' to the world."

"How could he be sure?" Alan muses.

I look at him and frown. "What do you mean?"

"Well, when he started this, the Internet didn't exist, at least not for public consumption. He always planned to show his face and it's pretty clear that he planned to use the videos to do it. Go back a few decades and we'd have gotten a stack of VHS tapes."

"So?"

"Well, that would have been direct. Him to us. But this?" He gestures at the computer. "He put these clips up on a public website. How could he be sure he'd get our attention?"

"He chose carefully," James answers. "The website he posted those clips on is the most viewed viral video site on earth. I imagine if we hadn't taken notice on our own, he would have followed up with an e-mail or a letter."

Alan nods, seeing it. "Maybe even a phone call."

"Any way to track the clips themselves?" I ask.

James shakes his head. "No. CDs, DVDs, even printer pages can be traced to some degree, but a digital clip doesn't have a watermark or buried signature by default."

"What about the upload? He had to contact the Web somewhere to get these clips onto user-tube."

"I already have computer crimes checking on that, honey-love,"

Callie replies. "They're rolling on the warrant as we speak."

"Probably a dead end," Alan observes.

"Probably," I agree, "but. ."

"Yeah," he says. "Sometimes the bad guys are stupid."

"Sometimes. Anything else?"

"Yes," James says. "Again-where is he getting his information?"

The biggest part of the mystery. Lisa Reid left her story in a diary, fine, but the others?

"Maybe he's a priest," Alan muses.

"A traveling priest?" I say. "I don't think so. Again, too high profile. Even if he was just posing as one, Father Yates didn't mention anything about visiting clergy. Rosemary didn't recognize her attacker." I shake my head. "Not a priest."

"It's the question to answer, though," Alan says.

"What about my earlier suggestion?" I ask. "Support groups?

With these kinds of secrets, we'd see plenty of substance abuse problems."

"Like Rosemary and Andrea," Alan agrees. "And look at how quick Andrea was to spill her guts."

"It doesn't have to be a single pool he's drawing from," Callie points out. "He could find the kind of person he's looking for in any number of places. Churches involved in heavy community outreach, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, choose your poison. He'd infiltrate as a fellow addict or alcoholic or whatever, gain the confidence of his peers, and lend a sympathetic ear."

"Good point," I say. "We need to look for that as a point of commonality in the victims."

"Let's list out what we do know about him," James says. I nod. "Sure. I'll start: He's high functioning and probably attractive. He'll be confident around women. They're not a threat to his selfimage. They don't make him angry, at least not overtly."

"He might be a virgin," James murmurs.

I raise my eyebrows. "How did you arrive at that?"

"Think about it. He's rational. His attitude with the victims is always calm. Any threat of violence against them is as a means to an end, not self-excitement. Of the victims whose bodies we've been allowed to find, there's no evidence of sexual violation or unnecessary violence. His fantasies are cerebral. They revolve around religion and truth and thus, by extension, purity." He shrugs. "The act of sex isn't just absent, it's nonexistent."

"Madonna and the whore," Callie muses.

"Come again?" I ask her.

"Oh you know, that old saw. Men want to marry Madonnas, but they want to have sex with whores. A wife who likes sex is not a wife, blah de blah."

"Right-but where's the connection here?"

"He doesn't have sex with these women. Why? Because he reveres them."

There's a shutter click inside my head, like the rapid fire of a highend camera. It is the feel of something shivering into place from out of nowhere.

"Yes," I say, staring off. "That feels right. But how can he revere them with the kinds of secrets they're carrying around? How?"

I walk over to the dry-erase board and stare at it hard, trying to force the thing that eludes me to show its face. My team is silent, waiting. They've seen this before.

"Well?" Alan finally asks.

I exhale in frustration. "I can't get my hands around it yet."

"Then move along, go to something else," Alan prods. "It'll come."

I know he's right. Try to remember where you left your keys and you'll never find them.

"What's the next plan of attack, oh Great One?" Callie asks.

"Missing persons," I say. "If he's stayed off our radar for this long, he's been hiding the bodies, making sure they wouldn't be found and that we wouldn't know about him until he was good and ready." I turn and look at the rows of names. Name after name, so many. Too many. "I'm guessing we're about to break a hundred plus unsolved missing-persons cases in the worst way possible. We need to find out who these people are."

"Fast," Alan agrees.

Death's promise isn't on the horizon anymore. It's standing next to us. Every now and then it checks its watch and grins.

26

"PARDON MY FRENCH, AGENT BARRETT, BUT IT SEEMS TO ME like we're now in the middle of a grade-A, eight-cylinder cluster fuck."

"That's a fair assessment, sir."

I'd answered my cell phone to find the Director of the FBI at the other end. I'd wondered for a moment how he got my number, but only for a moment. He is the Director of the FBI, after all.

"It's bad, sir, and it's only going to get worse."

"I guess you missed out on the executive reassurance seminar."

"I prefer the truth."

"Fine," he retorts. "Dazzle me with some truth."

"The truth, sir, is that this is huge and messy and I don't envy you the media side of things. But it's also true that this frenzy exists because he came out into the open. He's provided us with a list of his victims' names through the video clips. He's got a unique MO. If we don't catch him with what he's given us, we should all be fired."

"Don't give me any ideas." He sighs. "You're saying by cursing us with his publicity, he's blessed us with the way to catch him."

"Yep. And a very pithy way to put it too, sir."

"Leave the smart mouth to Agent Thorne, she does it better."

"Agreed and understood, sir."

"Tell me what you see, Smoky. Bottom lines."

I consider my answer for a moment. This conversation seems simple enough, but I am talking to Sam Rathbun. He's not just the Director of the FBI, it's rumored that he was a gifted interrogator once. Maybe he's being sly, putting me at ease so I'll give him enough verbal rope to hang me with later.

I sigh to myself. I don't have time for Machiavellian strategizing, and I've never been any good at it anyway. I understand evil men, not ruthless ones.

"I see one hundred and forty-three dead women, sir. I see a lot of families that are going to get the worst news possible. I see that he's made a fatal mistake by showing himself. We'll catch him, and we need to do it before he kills again."

He takes a moment. Mulling things over, I guess.

"Get back to work, Agent Barrett."

He hangs up before I can get the "yes, sir" out. I dial AD Jones right away. Politics may not be my strong suit, but even I know this rule: when the boss of bosses talks to you, you let your boss know about it, posthaste.

"What?" he answers.

"Is this a bad time, sir?"

"Yes. But you wouldn't have called without a good reason."

"I got a call from the Director."

"He called you personally?"

"Yes, sir."

I hear him muttering, cursing under his breath.

"What did he want?"

I relay the content of our conversation.

"Okay. I know what's going on there." He sounds mollified. "He's got someone asking him questions. Probably the President."

I thought I was fairly immune to the whole concept of people in powerful positions. They fart in private just like the rest of us, even if it is through silk. The President of the United States, I find, still gives me pause.

"Not sure how I feel about that, sir."

"Feel nervous, it's an appropriate response. Thanks for the heads-up."

Again, I'm hung up on before I can get my "yes, sir" out. Frustrating. I check my watch. It's 7:00 P.M. The night is young. I still have a lot to do, but I want to check in with Bonnie before diving back into the maelstrom.

"Hi, Smoky," she says. Her voice is troubled.

"Something wrong, babe?"

Silence.

"I watched some of those video clips."

I sag in my chair. Dear God.

"Oh baby. Why?"

"I–I-just what we talked about before. I want to do what you do. I saw the stuff on the news and I went and found a site that had them and watched some."

"How many did you see, honey?"

I hear her swallow. "Just one at first. It was this girl. Her name was April. That guy made her talk about hurting her baby. I got sick. I'm such a dork," she mumbles. "I was really upset with myself about getting sick, so then I went back and watched some more."

"How many more?"

"Maybe thirty."

"Jesus, Bonnie!"

"Don't be mad, Momma-Smoky. Please don't be mad."

Mad? That's the last emotion I'm feeling. It hadn't even occurred to me until she mentioned it, but in the midst of my concern, it's an idea that gives me pause. Should I be mad at her?

I realize that I've never really disciplined Bonnie. Not because I've been lax with her, but because she's never needed it. I think maybe, just maybe, she needs it now.

"I'm not mad, Bonnie, but. ." I think fast, looking for an appropriate punishment. "I'm going to restrict your computer privileges for a while. You should have asked me or Elaina about this before doing it, and I think you know that."

She sighs. "Yeah. I knew."

"And?"

"I knew you wouldn't let me."

The honesty of this makes me smile.

"That's generally a tip-off, babe."

Another sigh. "I know."

"Okay, so no Internet other than what you need for schoolwork for the next two weeks. Got it?"

"Yes."

Okay, okay, enough of that, how is my baby?

"How are you doing, sweetheart? Are you okay?"

"I don't know. I think the thing that bothered me the most was the things he said, that they made sense. That stuff about truth. A man like that, who does things like that, he shouldn't make sense, you know?"

"I do, babe."

"That's what really stays in my mind. The women, the things they went through, the things they did, sure, those were bad, but the worst thing is agreeing with him on anything."

"If you do what I do, you're going to run into that a lot. Actions-

the things people do, like murder or rape-can be in black and white. But people themselves? All kinds of shades of gray there, babe. That's why it's actions that matter the most."

"What do you mean?"

"You can have a guy say that he believes that being a good father is the most important quality that a man can have, who then goes home and beats his kids. Or, even more complicated-maybe that same guy counsels other people's children, perhaps he's a therapist. He's done that for years, and maybe he's even helped a lot of kids. But the only thing that matters, from the perspective of my job, is that he goes home and beats his own children."

She's quiet, mulling this over.

"I need to think about that some more."

And she will. Bonnie is like a waveless lake, placid and still. But there's a lot happening underneath, where the sun can't reach and the crayfish hide.

"Will you talk to me about this some more? When you're done thinking?"

"Okay."

"Promise?"

"I promise, Momma-Smoky. I feel better now. I'm sorry for doing something you wouldn't want me to do."

I note the bending of phrase to her will. She's not apologizing for the action itself, she's apologizing for the fact that the action upset me. I let it pass.

"Apology accepted. But remember-two weeks."

"I will."

"Now let me talk to Elaina. Too much."

"Way, way too much," she replies.

A moment passes and Elaina comes on the line.

"Oh, Smoky." She sounds so miserable, I want to reach through the phone and hug her.

"Don't beat yourself up, Elaina. We've been lucky up to now with Bonnie. I think we were due."

"I suppose you're right, but still-I feel so guilty. She was on her laptop, using the wireless Internet connection. I haven't been sleeping well, and I decided to take a nap and it really got away from me. I slept for a few hours. She watched the clips while I was sleeping. I'm so sorry, Smoky."

"Elaina, please. You're her second mother. You've taken on her homeschooling, you keep her there when my hours get crazy-you do a lot. Don't be so hard on yourself."

"Appreciated, but how would you feel if you were in my position?"

I'd feel like crap.

"Point taken. You know, Bonnie's not a baby. It's not like we for got to lock up the laundry detergent when she was a toddler and she ate it or something. She knew we wouldn't approve of what she was doing, and she deliberately hid it from us." I tell her about the twoweek moratorium on Internet usage.

"I'll help enforce that, you can be sure."

"Somehow I don't think it'll be an issue. She didn't raise a fuss about it. Not a peep."

"Hmmm." I'm happy to hear some amusement leak into Elaina's voice. "Maybe that should worry us more than anything else."

"Good point. Now stop beating yourself up. I love you."

She sighs in agreement. "I love you too. Give my husband a kiss for me. Bonnie wants to talk to you again."

"Put her on."

"I forgot to tell you something," Bonnie says, a little breathless.

"What's that?"

"That man? The one who calls himself the Preacher?"

"Yes?"

"Catch him and put him in jail forever. I want him to die there."

It's not a request, it's a pronouncement. Bonnie saw what he's done, and whatever else she's wrangling with about it, the blacks and the grays, the moral maybes, one certainty has arrived: his freedom is unacceptable.

"I will, sweetheart."

"Good."

She hangs up without another word. I stare at the phone for a moment, bemused and disturbed. Bonnie has always been both a simplicity and a complexity in my life. The simplicity is my love for her. It's unfettered, it's depthless, it's pure. The complexity is Bonnie herself. She's got the brightness of a child, but she's also layered like an adult, full of private places I'm not sure I'll ever get to see. She's learned how to keep her own secrets and, perhaps more significant, how to be comfortable about it. Sometimes this bothers me, most times it doesn't. It just is.

Now she's about to turn into a teen, like a werewolf under a full moon, and with that, it seems, comes the ability to sneak and the willingness to lie. This by itself wouldn't bother me; it's the way of things. The problem is Bonnie hasn't chosen to sneak or lie about smoking or kissing or driving too fast; she applied her stealth to viewing the last, terrible moments of all those poor women.

There's nothing, I reflect, quite like motherhood to make you feel more helpless or inept.

I head out of my office. The maelstrom awaits.

"THIS KIND OF CASE REALLY exposes all the holes in our missing persons system," Alan grouses. "Did you know that NCIC contains about a hundred thousand missing persons cases, but AFIS has less than one hundred of those on file?"

NCIC is the National Crime Information Center. AFIS is the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The other two major databases that figure into what we do are CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System for missing persons, and VICAP.

"You only got about fifteen percent of unidentified human remains that have been entered into NCIC. CODIS has been around since 1990, and it's growing, but it's still just a drop in the ocean."

CODIS was a stroke of brilliance. If someone goes missing and has not turned up within thirty days, a DNA reference sample is obtained. This can be either a direct sample from something belonging to the missing person (hair, saliva from a toothbrush) or a comparison sample from a blood relation. The DNA gets analyzed and the profile is loaded into the database. If a body turns up, it can often be identified via CODIS. There have also been cases of a child missing for years being located alive because of CODIS.

The problem with all of these databases comes down to cooperation, time, and money. They're all voluntary. If the local departments don't fill out the forms or collect the DNA, it doesn't end up in the right database. Even when the information is provided, someone has to enter it.

It's a flawed and incomplete system, but it's better than nothing for sure. We've broken cases using these various databases. They might be limping, but they're still assets.

"What have we found?"

"We have name matches on forty so far. Computer crimes is assisting on this flat out. They're extracting still images of the victims' faces from the clips, which we'll then shoot to the respective local lawenforcement agencies. They'll take the photo and name to the families and get positive IDs. My guess is we'll be looking at ten out of ten on that. Too big a coincidence that the name from one of these videos would match up with a missing persons case."

"I agree. By the way, your wife says to give you a kiss."

"Thanks."

"Keep on it. We're going to go till about eleven."

"Joy."

I head over to James, who is just hanging up the phone.

"The tips Jezebel is fielding to us are paying off," he says. "We've had almost eighty people come forward to identify victims on the clips."

"Wow."

Some might wonder why so many so fast. I don't. In many ways, the missing are far far worse than the dead. The missing are a maybe: Maybe they are still alive. Maybe they are not. The missing prevent closure, disallow true grief. That maybe ensures that the families are always looking, forever grasping at straws of hope. I brought the news to a mother, once, that a daughter who'd gone missing three years earlier had been found dead. She wept, of course, but it's what she said that cut me the deepest.

"It's been so hard not knowing," she'd stammered through her tears. "One time-oh God-one time I remember being weak, and just wanting it to end, even if that meant she was dead."

I had watched her eyes widen as she truly saw what it was that she'd just said, that she'd wished, however briefly, for her daughter's death. The impact of this realization on her is something I'll never forget.

Keening is a kind of vocal lament that is traditional in Scotland and Ireland. In older days, before it was outlawed by the Catholic Church, it was done as a part of the wake. A woman or women would be hired to list the genealogy of the deceased, to praise them, and to emphasize the pain of the survivors. She (or they) would do this vocally, often wailing, and using physical movements such as clapping or rocking back and forth. It was a verbal expiation, designed to do justice to the fact of the loss of life. I thought of this then, because that's what I watched this woman do. She keened. I think of it now, all those families. Keening. Eighty, just an incredible number, impossible to really get your mind around in terms of the human impact.

"I'm following up with all of the local law enforcement," James says. "I've made myself the sole point of contact. I'll have them assume any of our confirmed missings are a homicide, and get them to put their best detectives on it. Anything found will get funneled through me, and I'll collate it and add it to our database on these victims."

"We have a database?"

He points to his computer. "I wrote one."

"Good work, James."

"I know."

He turns away from me, a dismissal.

The door to the office swings open and Callie comes marching in with a big map of the U.S., mounted on foam-core. Kirby is following her, jabbering away.

"So we're good on the flowers? The price is fine?"

"The price is wonderful, Kirby. How about the cake?"

"I'm not fucking the cake guy. He's got back hair."

"Very funny. The pricing?"

"It's under budget. Oh, and good news on the photographer. There's a guy I used to know. We worked together, stuff like that. He used to do surveillance, but he's good with a camera and, hey, it's kind of the same thing, right?"

I watch Callie mull over the wisdom of letting Kirby bring an old work buddy to her wedding, given Kirby's background.

"Fine."

"Bridal pragmatism wins again," Alan opines. "That's going to be some wedding. Kirby will have fucked or threatened half the vendors, and the rest will be a collection of ex-mercenaries she used to know."

"Not ex," Kirby says. "A lot of them are still on the market."

"I hate to break this up," I say, "but-Callie?"

"Hey, I'm outie," Kirby says, "I know what I need for now. See you later Callie-babe."

"Yes, please call me later."

"I'm only up till four in the morning," Kirby chirps. "Girl needs her beauty sleep, you know?"

Callie holds up the map for us to see.

"I got James to print out a list of all the locations of our victims for me, and I marked them with pushpins."

We crowd around to get a look.

"I see we have a few clusters," Alan says. He points to Los Angeles, where there are over twenty. "And here." Las Vegas, Nevada.

"Sun and sin," Callie says.

The rest are spread out among the Preacher's other target states. Some are in cities anyone would recognize, others are in small towns I've never heard of. The overall effect is sobering.

"Like a fucking forest," Alan growls, an echo of my own thoughts.

"Excuse me," Kirby says. She hadn't left, after all. "Why is this name on this board?"

She's pointing to one of the Los Angeles victims. Willow Thomas.

"Why?" I ask.

The smile she gives me is mirthless and terrible. It puts me on immediate alert.

"Please answer the question."

Her tone is mild. She could be someone asking about the weather. But the leopard eyes have appeared, and they are cold, cold, cold. This is the absolute indifference of a hired killer, the kind who shoots a man not because he was a particularly bad man, but because someone wanted him dead and was willing to pay to make it so.

"Haven't you been watching the news, honey-love?"

Kirby flicks her gaze at Callie, then back to me.

"Now, if I'd been watching the news, I guess I wouldn't be asking the question, would I, Callie?"

The fact that Kirby uses Callie's name without adding any twist to it heightens my unease. Her voice is still mild, the chide she throws at Callie just a languid "pshaw" of a slap, but the air feels electric and dangerous.

What the hell?

"There's a man," I say, watching her for a reaction. "We think he's been killing women for the last twenty years. We're pretty sure the names on the board belong to his victims."

"Victims? As in dead?"

"Yes."

She walks over to me and puts her arm around my shoulders. It's anything but friendly, an intense and uncomfortable closeness.

"And?" she whispers, her mouth near my ear. "Do we know who this man is?" Her words could have been carved from ice, they're so cold.

"Not yet." I pull away and look at her directly. "Not sure I'd tell you if I did."

She stares at me for what seems like forever with that arctic gaze.

"Can I talk to you?" she asks me. "Alone?"

She walks toward my office without waiting for an answer. I turn to Alan, Callie, and James.

"Not a clue," Callie says.

"I never know what's going on in that psycho's head," Alan says. Only James is silent.

WE'RE SEATED IN MY OFFICE with the door closed. I am waiting for Kirby to start talking. The fact that she's not is unnatural. The wind blows, Kirby talks; it's one of the axioms of life. She's sitting in the chair that faces my desk. She's picking her lip and looking off. She gives me a lopsided smile.

"If you're waiting for me to lose it, you're going to be waiting for a loooooooooong time, Smoky."

The attempt at flip, something she's normally so good at, right now seems less than genuine.

"I think I already did see you lose it."

She scrutinizes me, flashes a smile and shrugs.

"Well. . maybe I had a little bit of a reaction there."

"Cut the shit, Kirby. I appreciate what you did for me in the bathroom. Let me return the favor."

She shakes a finger at me. "Now, now, I don't let anyone behind the curtain, Smoky. You should know that."

"Tell me about Willow Thomas. Who was she? Who was she to you?"

Again, the lip picking. I've never seen Kirby this wordless or evasive. She's generally about as subtle as a two-year-old.

"Willow was. . a friend of a friend. She was a civilian. Always. She was born innocent and probably died that way. She was a puppy dog, a kitty cat, too bright eyed and bushy tailed for the world you and I live in, you know? She wasn't like me or my friend. We were never civilians. We came out ready to rock and roll, prepared for the shit and shinola the big ol' bad ol' world dishes out. Not Willow. She was weak."

"What was your friend's name?"

Another finger wag and lopsided smile. "Nice try. But no. I'm not sharing that particular information right now."

"Is it germane?"

"If I thought it would help you figure out who this future dead man is, I would tell you."

Future dead man. It has the ring of utter certainty coming from her mouth.

"You're sure?"

"Willow made the right choice. She left us for a nice, normal life. We never spoke again, but I checked in on her every now and then to make sure no one was taking advantage of the puppy dog. One day I checked and she was gone. I used some of my-ah-resources to try and track her down, but she'd vanished. It was like she swam out into the ocean one night and never came back."

"When was this?"

"About ten years ago."

"Does she have any family?"

She takes a long time to answer.

"No. She was an orphan."

"I see."

I wait for more. Kirby smiles.

"Hell will freeze over first. She was an orphan, she disappeared ten years ago from sunny Los Angeles, she never deliberately hurt a person in her life besides herself. That's all you need to know."

"She was hiding something, Kirby. That's how this guy operates."

I explain the video clips to her. I watch her face as I do, looking for a tell, some crack in that Kirby-facade. She just listens, twirling a strand of blonde hair with one finger while she does.

"I understand," she says when I'm done.

"Kirby, did Willow have any problems you know about? Drinking, drugs? Did she go to meetings, anything like that?"

"Actually, yeah. She drank. She kicked it, though. Big AA attendee."

Bingo, I think.

"Anything else you can tell me about her?"

"Nothing that will help you." She leans forward. Again, there's that feel of something predatory and electric in the air. "So you don't have any idea yet who he is?"

"Nope."

She nods. "Well, okay then. I guess we're done here." She stands up to go.

"Kirby. Do you want to see the clip?"

She pauses, her back to me, hand on the doorknob.

"No. I know the secret that she was hiding."

She turns the knob and leaves.

A CIVILIAN. THAT'S WHAT KIRBY had called Willow Thomas. I understand the reference, watching the woman on the video in front of me.

She had the look. She would have been surprised by the cruel cuts of life, would never have failed to feel betrayed by them. She'd have survived on a plane of hopeful fairy tales, idealizing and dreaming until something smashed into her and brought her back down to earth.

It would have been a never-ending cycle, started as a result of some great harm done to her that she never really recovered from. She'd been beautiful, in a limpid-eyed kind of way. She had straight dark hair and she was thin, painfully so. The gauntness brought out her beauty, the way it will in some women. She had pale, pale skin, with color at the cheekbones. Her lips had been full and red.

"Tell me about the scars, Willow," the Preacher says to her. She is shivering. Her eyes dart every which way; at him, right, left, then staring straight into the camera so that I feel like she's looking right at me. Her tears aren't constant. The corners of her eyes take a long time to fill before releasing single, huge drops that careen down her cheeks and plop almost immediately onto her naked thighs. I am hit with a wave of queasiness when I realize she is covered in gooseflesh. He must have been able to smell her horror.

"Willow," he prods, gentle as always. "The scars. Or I'll have to hurt you again."

This prompts a shiver so powerful I hear the chair legs rattle against the floor.

"No!" she cries.

"Then talk, please. Tell me about the scars."

"But, but you already know," she whines. "I know you do, you told me."

"Yes, but I need you to say it on camera."

Her shivering stops. She heaves a single, huge sigh. Then another, a lung-filling whoop of breath in, a noisy rattling out. Her head drops so that all that straight hair hangs down and tickles the top of her tear-spattered thighs.

"We used to cut each other," she whispers.

"Who, Willow? You and who?"

"Me and Mandy. Mandy was my sister. She was two years older than me. We went into foster care together because Mom and Dad beat us so much. Mandy told me about cutting, how it could make you feel better when you hurt a lot."

"And did you? Hurt a lot?"

"Yes."

"Go on."

"We used a razor. Most of the time we'd cut on the inside of our legs, above where you'd ever see it if you wore a skirt. Sometimes, we'd do it for each other."

"That's what you were doing that day, isn't it? Cutting each other?"

"Yes." It's the smallest voice I've ever heard. Barely audible.

"What happened?"

"She'd cut me first. It felt. . wonderful. I can't describe it. Before you cut, you're feeling numb and hurting at the same time, it's all unreal, but then you cut and the pain is real, it's sharp and sweet and now. No future, no past. Just now. Cutting made everything only about that moment. It made you real, it made you matter."

"Go on."

"I was feeling kind of hot and good, you know. She'd cut me pretty deep. She saw how great I felt, and she told me to cut her deep too. Real deep. So I did."

"Did you cut too deep, Willow?"

Her face comes up and I'm shocked at how white it is. This is a corpse face.

"I cut into the artery," she whispers. "She was always so thin, we both were. I was pushing and I wasn't paying enough attention because I was still feeling the adrenaline rush and endorphins from when she cut me and I just cut too deep. She started to bleed so fast, so much."

She stops talking.

"Tell the rest of it. What did you do then?"

I see the first hint that there'd been any strength in this woman; her eyes gleam with pure hate for the Preacher. If she could have, I think she would've cut him deep too.

"I told her she was bleeding bad. She looked down at it and-and-

she smiled. She smiled. She told me to get out and not to tell anyone I was the one who'd cut her. I told her no, she needed help, but she told me it was too late, she was going to die, and that it was okay, she didn't mind, kind of liked it, really, but she didn't want me to get into trouble so I needed to leave and come back and act like I found her and like it was a big surprise so I did and I counted to five and I came in and she was already going unconscious and I screamed and there was blood everywhere and-" The torrent only stops for her to draw in another one of those whooping breaths. "I was holding her and trying to stop the blood, but it was too much. I was in a pool of it, I could have gone swimming in it." A beat of silence. "She died."

"Did you do what your sister told you, Willow? Did you pretend?"

She nods. She's gone even paler. Her eyes sparkle with her hatred, naked and pure.

"Say it, child," he tells her.

She shakes once, another one of those chair-leg-rattling shivers. "I killed my sister and let everyone think she'd killed herself." She spits the words out, bitter, venomous.

"And did you garner sympathy for this?"

"Yes."

"Did you tell people about your own cutting?"

"Yes."

"And the last thing, Willow. Did you tell them your sister led you down that path? Did you let them think she was the one who made you do it?"

"Yesssss." It comes out in a moan. Her eyes are fluttering. Her facial expression morphs from hate to despair and through all the permutations in between. He waits. I get the sense he's well satisfied, and I feel a little bit of my own hatred rise.

"Thank you, Willow. Remember: God is love."

Fade to black.

I didn't realize I'd been holding my breath. I exhale and lean back in my chair.

So that was Kirby's friend, I think.

I wonder if this really is the secret Kirby seems to think she knows. A knock on the door interrupts. James pokes his head in.

"We have a lead."

27

"WE HAD WARRANTS DRAWN UP TO SEE IF WE COULD ATTACH

an IP number to the uploads of the video clips," James says. "We wanted to find out if he was stupid enough to lead us to his Internet connection. Given the sophistication of this perp, it seemed unlikely, but he put up a lot of material, so it was worth a try."

"And? You're saying he left a trail?"

"Most connections operate on the basis of a dynamic IP number. The Internet provider assigns a new IP to the user machine every time they connect, or every day. Some people prefer what they call a static IP-a number that never changes. The number associated with these uploads is static."

"Which means it couldn't belong to anyone else but that particular bill-paying user."

"Correct."

I pace, thinking about this.

"Seems really really strange. It doesn't make sense he'd be so smart about everything else and so stupid about this. Is it possible this isn't our guy?"

"Very. If the owner of this IP uses a wireless router, and he didn't password protect it, then someone could conceivably park a car in front of his home with a laptop and hijack his connection for the uploads."

"Is it really that common for home wireless networks to be insecure?"

"Yes. A lot of people buy a router and just plug it in and go. They never bother to secure the connection, mostly because they don't understand it themselves."

"Show me the guy."

He taps a key on his keyboard and points to the screen. A picture of a California driver's license is displayed.

"Harrison Bester," I read. "Age forty-one, black hair, blue eyes. Normal enough looking. Do we know anything about him yet?"

"We do now," Alan says, walking in the door, waving a manila folder.

He plops down in his chair and reads aloud.

"Harrison was a systems engineer who parlayed a pretty good severance package into purchasing a franchised shipping store. He doesn't make big money, but he's definitely middle class. Lives in Thousand Oaks. He's married, wife's name is Tracy. They have two kids, both daughters, aged seventeen and fifteen."

"Which, again, sounds all wrong," Callie observes. "Harrison and Tracy were sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g at a fairly young age to have a seventeen-year-old. That doesn't fit with our boy's timeline. He's the dedicated sort. No time to be a family man."

"I agree," James says.

"Me too," I reply. I think for a moment and come to a decision.

"Callie, I want you to take a laptop and your car and park in front of the Bester house. See if Bester has a wireless connection and if he isn't up on his security. In the meantime, I'll coordinate with AD Jones and get this guy put under twenty-four-hour surveillance."

"Safe than sorry?" Alan asks.

I shrug. "I don't think Bester is the Preacher either, but thinking and knowing are two different things. Even if he isn't, that doesn't mean they don't know each other. Maybe they're in cahoots. Or maybe they're just longtime drinking buddies and Harrison has no idea his friend is a serial killer. There's always the possibility-slim, but possible-that the Preacher will decide to come back and steal some more wireless time. It's our best lead, for now."

"Cahoots," Alan snorts, teasing me.

"I'll go and see about Mr. Bester," Callie says, grabbing her laptop bag and heading toward the door.

"Call me with what you find," I yell after her.

"Only if you promise you won't keep me from going home afterward for a quickie with my husband-to-be," she calls back, and then she's out the door.

"I looked into the support group Rosemary attended," Alan says.

"And?"

I guess he hears the hopefulness in my voice, because he shakes his head in the negative. "She went pretty regularly to a Narcotics Anonymous in the Valley. I spoke to the director there. It's a high turnover meeting, with people from every spectrum. There's no roll call and no application or screening. Long as you talk, you're welcome."

"Perfect hiding place."

"Yeah. Anyway, he sympathized, but he wasn't willing to give me information on anyone. Par for the course." He shrugs, frustrated.

"Guy's smart. I'll bet he was there."

"And I'll bet you could question every one of them and no one would remember anyone who stuck out. Just like the passengers on the plane."

AD JONES ASKED ME TO brief him in person rather than on the phone. I knock on his office door.

"Come in," he barks.

He's seated behind his desk as I enter. He looks beat. His tie is loosened and his cuffs are rolled up. I plop down in one of the leather chairs. He cocks his head, appraising me.

"You look terrible," he says.

"Likewise, sir. And thanks."

The ends of his mouth curl up in the barest hint of a smile.

"Yeah. It's been a hell of a day. It's been all Preacher all the time up here. The media is going nuts, which means the Director is going nuts. I've had to field calls from the police commissioners of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vegas, Carson City, Phoenix, Salt Lake City. . you get the idea. I've managed to get them all to agree to total cooperation. No turf wars."

"How'd you pull off that miracle?"

He rubs his forehead. "They have families screaming for answers or blood or both, along with plenty of media coverage. Commissioners have to play politics, and they need answers quick. They recognize the best chance of that is for all of us to just get along."

"Thank you, sir. It will help."

"Your turn to help me. Where are we at on this?"

I brief him on the IP number lead. He makes a face.

"I agree that it has to be checked out, and I'll authorize the surveillance, but I doubt it will be our man."

"I agree. He's spent a lot of time building up to this moment. It's important to him. Too important to trip up over something so elementary."

"Where does that take us, then?"

"I think we're going to solve this by finding the most basic common denominator, sir."

"Clarify."

"It's a logic problem. He's smart, but he's a creature of habit. All his victims have been women with the exception of Lisa Reid. They all had a deep, dark secret to disclose, and we can deduce that he killed them all the same way. We have to distill the pattern down to the one thing that'll lead us to him."

"Where do you think that's going to lie?"

"Everything for him is about secrets and truth. The question we need to get answered: how does he know what he knows? I think if we figure that out, we'll have him."

"Ideas?"

"We think he's picking his victims from AA meetings, support groups, and churches. He probably infiltrates as a fellow member." I shrug. "I mean, he could be acting as a counselor, I guess. Or in the case of a church, as a priest."

"But you don't think so."

"It's too direct, too risky. He needs to hide in the crowd, and he needs the freedom to fade away when the time comes. He can't do that if he's someone people build a relationship with. Addicts and sinners trust their counselors and their priests. They notice when they go missing."

"Right," he says, thoughtful. "So how do we use this to find him?"

"I don't know yet." I can hear the frustration in my voice.

"There's two things to do in that situation, Agent Barrett. Either you take your attention off it, or you immerse yourself in the environment."

"Yes, sir."

"Figure this one out soon, Smoky. From what I can tell, he wants us to catch him. Let's give him what he wants. Get going."

I leave his office with the words he'd spoken ringing in my mind. Immerse yourself in the environment.

When I get back down to Death Central, I stand in front of Alan's desk.

"Let's go see Father Yates."

28

IT'S ANOTHER LATE NIGHT ROAD TRIP TO THE VALLEY. THE moon is hiding now, punching through the clouds in places with silver fists.

"Never see any stars in LA," Alan mutters.

"It's all the city lights reflecting off the sky." I smile. "That and the smog."

The wheels hum on the uneven pavement as we barrel through the dark.

FATHER YATES IS DRESSED IN a pair of jeans and a pullover shirt. His hair is rumpled. His eyes are tired. He yawns once.

"Forgive me." He smiles, shaking first my hand and then Alan's.

"I'm early to bed, early to rise, as the saying goes."

"Don't sweat it," I tell him. "We're in the same boat, except that it's more like late to bed, early to rise."

He gestures to the front row of pews as a place to sit.

"You said you needed my help."

"Have you watched any of the video clips he made?"

"Just the first few where he's laying out his argument for truth. I have no interest in watching him murder anyone."

"And? What did you think?"

He leans back in the pew and studies the large crucifix of Jesus. It is his anchor in this place, I can see it in the way some of the worry and tiredness leaves his eyes.

"Are you at all familiar with the catechism of the Catholic Church, Agent Barrett?"

"Uh, sure. I was raised Catholic."

"What about the official catechism?"

"I don't think I know what you mean."

"Hold on a second."

He disappears into the sacristy area and returns holding a small, thick hardback book. He hands it to me. I read the title: Catechism of the Catholic Church.

"Everything you ever wanted to know about the Catholic Church but were afraid to ask." He smiles. "There is a paragraph in here that I use to guide my actions. I went and read it again not long after I watched those video clips." He takes the book back from me and flips to a page near the front. "Here it is. 'The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope, or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love.' " He closes the book. He touches the cover with affection. "I love that paragraph. It's a piece of truth. Whatever else might occur with my church, whatever mistakes are made by overzealous or intolerant parishioners, whatever crimes might be committed by evil men masquerading as men of God, I can read this and know the problem lies with men, not with the church or with my faith. Those who fail the church are those who don't align their actions to the purity of purpose contained in that simple paragraph, the idea that we have 'no other objective than to arrive at love.' "

"It is a nice idea," I allow. "Too bad it's not put into direct practice more often." I wince. "Sorry again, Father."

He smiles. "I happen to agree with you. Confrontation and attack are not the way to bring someone to Christ. You don't tell them they are stupid and hell bound; you show them Christ's words, or set an example yourself through your actions. Or just lend a helping hand when someone needs it. Faith is an act of choice, it's not something you can foster at gunpoint."

"I see where you're going with this," Alan rumbles. "The Preacher isn't exactly embodying the whole love concept."

Father Yates scowls. "Murder is never an act of love. This man is deluded at best."

"What about his ideas?" I ask. "The things he said about truth?"

He sighs. "I will be honest. The ideas themselves are powerful. I've been taking confession for a long time, and I've seen the phenomenon he talks about. The hardest thing isn't for people to tell the truth-it's for them to tell the whole truth. I'm sure there are plenty who will agree with what he's said. You can count on him having supporters."

"Are you joking?" I'm incredulous.

"Afraid not. A lot of people in the Christian world believe in black and white and operate on a principle of 'you get what you deserve'

when it comes to God and the Bible. If you didn't own up in the confessional, then you were going to hell anyway. Some will see these poor victims as victims of nothing more than their unwillingness to confess to God."

I look at the crucifix, that paint-chipped, color-faded Christ. I search for the same comfort Father Yates seems to find. I come up empty, as always. How can I believe in a church or a faith that would produce people like that?

"Don't forget the good that's done," he says, breaking in on my thoughts. "The millions of children who eat every day because of Christian charities, the houses built for the homeless, the mission food lines. Not long ago a group of Christians from South Korea went to Afghanistan. They knew it was dangerous, and it was probably ill-advised, but the point is, they had no ulterior motive. They went there to help. They were taken hostage and while the majority were released, a number of them died. Religion has always and will always be a double-edged sword. It's how you use it that makes the difference, and that always depends upon the individual.

"It's no different than anything else. If there was no Internet, there'd be less pornography and child exploitation. But what about all the good done because the Internet exists? Commerce, free flow of information, breaking down culture barriers and xenophobia because people can talk to each other across the world? Anything can be used for good or evil. That includes the church and interpretations of the Bible."

"Talk to me about confession, Father. Tell me what it means to you."

His eyes find Jesus again. "In my opinion, holy confession is the most important service the church can offer. The real reason that monster's words are going to hit home to people is not because they're particularly revolutionary, but because the fact is, most of us walk around with secrets that eat away at us every minute of every day. I have had confessors sob with relief after confessing just a minor misdeed."

"Most of these people did some really awful things. What about that?"

"I've heard some terrible things in my time, yes, it's true. Terrible things. And there have been those who weren't particularly repentant. But the vast majority struggle under the burden of the bad things they've done. Most people judge themselves much harder than you or I would. Hearing confession hasn't jaded me, it's had the opposite effect. I truly believe in the basic decency of humanity."

"That's a tough sell with me, Father," I say.

"Amen," Alan mutters.

He smiles. "That's understandable. You spend your time with men and women who sin without remorse-worse, with enjoyment. I promise you, the more common example of man is the mother who has to be coaxed into forgiving herself because she got tired and raised her voice at her child. We're flawed, not evil."

"Do you hear about everything?" I ask.

"Most things. People hold things back sometimes. Taking confession isn't a rote activity. It's an art form. You have to build trust in your parishioners. They have to know you won't treat them differently after you hear about their sexual peccadilloes or petty crimes, or worse."

"There have to have been times you've heard something really bad. Murder or child molestation. How do you treat that person the same afterward?"

He shrugs. It's not a "who knows" kind of shrug. It's a motion that says, "I have no other answer than the one you're about to hear."

"It's my sacred duty."

"Must be tough sometimes."

"There have been moments," he allows.

"How do you deal with it when you hear about something hap pening right now?" Alan asks. "A father who's molesting his kids, for example. Or a guy who confesses that he has HIV from sleeping with hookers but continues to sleep with his wife?"

"I pray, Agent Washington. I pray for strength. I pray that the act of confession itself will prevent that person from continuing to sin. Yes, it's tough. But if I break the seal of confession because of the sins of one man or woman, I make myself unavailable to the hundreds of decent people who need me as Father Confessor. Should I make hundreds pay for the sins of one?"

"That's it? No exceptions?"

"I am allowed to urge penitents to turn themselves in to the police if it's a criminal matter, and I can even withhold absolution if they refuse, but I can't break the seal of confession."

Alan shakes his head. "I don't envy you your job, Father, especially since I can see that you're a thinker. Must keep you awake at nights."

Father Yates smiles. "Some survive on the strength of faith. Some survive intellectually, their thoughts guided by scripture. I fall somewhere in between. I have crises, all priests do. Nuns for that matter. Mother Teresa struggled with personal darkness and doubts about God for most of her life."

"Have you seen real change in people?" I ask.

"Of course. Not always, but enough to keep me happy."

"What's the common thread? For those who change?"

He considers my question. "Contrition. True contrition. It's one thing to confess to a sin. True contrition, in my opinion, requires change as a basic component. If you are contrite, you change. If you are not, you won't."

"Was Rosemary contrite?"

"I believe so, yes."

The glimmering in my mind is getting stronger. There's some thing here, in what we're talking about. It's not just a flicker at the corner of my eye anymore; it's an itch I can't reach.

"Can I see the inside of your confessional, Father?"

He pauses for some time, studying me. I don't feel uncomfortable or violated by his scrutiny. There's too much kindness there. He stands up. "Follow me."

"I'll wait here," Alan calls after me. "Maybe do a little praying about getting enough sleep tonight."

I give him a halfhearted wave as I follow Father Yates toward the confessional booth. Two things are happening at the same time here; the thing I'm trying to see is getting clearer, stronger, brighter, and the voice in my head, the one that makes my stomach do loop-deloops, is back. I feel a cold, greasy sweat break out on my forehead.

"Let's give you the full experience," Father Yates says as we approach the confessional booth. "I'll take up my normal position and you take the place of the penitent."

"Sure," I say, but I can hardly hear my own voice. Too many bat wings flapping around in my head.

I open the door and enter. There's little light here. The booth is small and sparse, made of dark, poorly stained wood. A kneeler is set on the floor below the lattice screen that divides priest and penitent. I close the door and stare down at the kneeler.

In for a penny, in for a pound, I think. I want to laugh and cry at the same time.

This time the voice speaks out loud: See me.

I kneel in an instant. For some reason, this makes the voice go silent.

Father Yates slides the window open.

"Smaller than I remember," I say.

"I take it you were much younger the last time you confessed," he replies, amused.

"Well, let's see. . bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been- hmmm-about twenty-seven years since my last confession."

"I see. Do you have anything to confess, my child?"

I freeze. I feel something rising inside me. It's angry and ugly and bitter.

"Is that what you were thinking when you were looking at me back there, Father? That you'd get me in here and I'd spill my guts and find my faith again?"

"Just the spill your guts part," he says, calm. "I think it's a little too soon for the last."

"Screw you."

He sighs. "Agent Barrett, you are here, I am here, and inside these small walls, you're safe. You can rage in here, you can weep in here, you can tell me anything, and it remains between you, me, and Christ. Something is troubling you, I can tell. Why not talk about it?"

"The last guy I told all my secrets to tried to kill me, Father." I'm surprised at how cold my voice sounds.

"Yes, I read about that. I can understand your misgivings. Perhaps if you can't extend your faith to God, you can extend it to me? I've never broken a confidence."

"I believe you," I allow.

I do. I can't deny that with this environment comes a yearning. It's deep and piercing and the fact of that is the cause of a lot of my anger. See me, the voice had said. The problem was not that I couldn't see what it was asking. The problem was that I could never stop seeing it. The need to tell someone my secret, finally, to get it off my chest, the possibility that it would bring me some peace-God or no God-

promises a relief so strong that I can feel it crawling across my skin like an army of ants.

I breathe in and out, fast. My heart is racing. My hands are clenched together, more in desperation than supplication.

"I don't know if I believe in God anymore, Father," I whisper. "Is it right to confess if I'm so unsure He even exists?"

"Confession, so long as you are truly contrite, can only be a good thing, Agent Barrett. I truly believe that."

"Smoky. Call me Smoky."

"All right. Smoky, do you have any sins to confess?"

I have many sins, so many, Father, sins of pride, sins of envy, sins of lust. I have murdered men. In self-defense, it's true, but some part of me enjoyed killing them. I love that I got to kill the man who took my Matt and my Alexa from me. It pleases me forever. Sins?

I have sinned against my family, my friends, those who loved and trusted me. I have lied-a lot. I drink in the night. I have only lain with two men in my life, but I have done it with abandon. Sometimes for love, sure, but sometimes just for the pleasure they could give me. Is it a sin to have taken joy at the feel of cock in my mouth, to have whispered into Matt's or Tommy's ears "fuck me fuck me fuck me, dear sweet God, fuck me"? Does God appreciate my bringing Him there, making Him a part of that sweaty moment?

I have gazed on the suffering of others, on their victimization, on their murdered and mutilated corpses, and I have taught myself how to turn away. How to shut off the images and the emotions, to go home and eat spaghetti and watch TV as though their pain never existed or didn't matter. I have made a job out of hunting evil men. I get paid a salary because people die.

Are these sins?

I shift on the kneeler. All those things that had run through my head may or may not be sins. None of them are the thing that wakes up the monster in my mind.

See me, it says, but the voice is gentle this time, and the voice, of course, is me.

I feel tears running down my face. I'm going to tell him, I realize. I was always going to tell him, I knew it the moment I walked in here. That's why the sweat and nausea went away.

"I did a terrible thing, Father," I whisper. "I think because I did this thing I'll never let myself feel real joy. I'll never let myself really love someone again. Because I don't deserve it."

Saying it aloud brings out the anguish in earnest. The griefmonster tries to crawl up and out of my throat as a wail. I fight him down, let him detonate inside me. It's too quiet here; Alan would hear me. I clench my hands together in a single fist and I push it against my mouth. I bite down till I break the skin. I taste a little of my own blood and shiver with my own pain.

Father Yates has been quiet, waiting. He speaks again. His voice is gentle. Safe. He reminds me, for a moment, of my real father, not God, but my dad, who always kept the creatures under my bed at bay.

"Put it into words, Smoky. Just let it go. I'll listen, I won't judge. What you say here will never be repeated by me to another. Whatever burden you're carrying, it's time to put it down."

I nod, tears still running down my face. I know he can't see me nod, but my throat has closed up, and I can't speak. He seems to sense this.

"Take your time."

I sniffle and he waits. As the moments pass, the hand clenching my throat loosens. I'm able to speak again.

"After the attack, I was in the hospital for a while. Sands had cut my face down to the bone in most places. He'd sliced me on other parts of my body and had burned me with a cigar. None of it was life threatening, but I was in a lot of pain and they were concerned about infection because some of the wounds were so deep.

"I was set on dying, Father. I had absolutely, positively, one hundred percent decided that I was going to be blowing my own brains out. I was going to get out of that hospital and I was going to go home, get my affairs in order, and kill myself."

"Go on."

"This is all stuff everyone knows. I had to see a shrink-and you know how that turned out. The point is, people know I wrestled with the whole suicide thing. They know about the rape, and they can sure see the scars. That's all safe stuff. Stuff they can understand and excuse. 'Of course she was suicidal, look at what she went through, poor thing!' You understand?"

"Yes."

"And some part of me, Father, some part of me ate it up. All that sympathy. Poor, poor Smoky. Isn't she strong? Isn't it admirable how she overcame and went on?"

The bitterness is rising in me like black coffee, or sour milk. I can almost taste it in my mouth. It's the flavor of self-loathing. No, that's not strong enough. Self-hate.

"So tell me that thing they didn't know, Smoky. The thing that wasn't admirable."

The rush of hostility makes me a little dizzy with its ferocity. Heat blooms in my cheeks and forehead. Pure anger, the do-or-die of an animal with its back against the wall. This secret is going to go down fighting. It can see the light, and the light makes it rage and scream.

"Fuck God," I breathe, and love the taste of the words, the thrill of them.

"I'm sorry?"

"Fuck God and His forgiveness. Why should I ask that asshole to forgive me for anything? What did my mother need to be forgiven for? Did you know that in the last days she begged us to kill her? She was in so much pain, she begged us to do it, to take her life. And she was the most devout Catholic I knew!"

"And did you?" he asks, his voice calm.

"What? Fuck you. No." The rage is a tidal wave, it has swept me up and I am helpless against it.

"Then tell me what you did do, Smoky. You don't have to ask God for forgiveness, if you don't want to. But you do have to ask yourself."

I grind my teeth and grip my hands together until they're numb.

"Forgive myself?" I snarl in a whisper. "What, just because I say it out loud here, it's suddenly going to all be okay?"

"No. But it'll be a start. I can't tell you why it makes a difference to tell someone else what we've done, Smoky, but it does. It's only words, but yes, you will feel better. You need to tell me what you did and then realize that the world didn't end because you told me."

That calm is unstoppable. It's a little juggernaut of faith, patient and inexorable. If he had to empty a swimming pool with a spoon, he'd do so without complaint, however long it took. It makes me feel safe and hostile in tandem. I want to hug him and slap him all at once.

"I was pregnant," I blurt out.

Silence.

I think, for a moment, that he's judging me already, but I realize he's just waiting.

"Go on," he says.

"Just a few months. It was a big surprise. I used a diaphragm. Matt and I weren't old, but we weren't exactly spring chickens either. It just. . happened."

"Did your husband know?"

You're too smart for me, Father.

"No. I wasn't sure I was going to tell him either. I wasn't sure I wanted to keep the baby."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Selfishness, I guess. I was in my late thirties, career on the rise, all the usual excuses. Don't misunderstand, I hadn't decided to get rid of it, not for sure. But I was thinking about it, and I was hiding it from Matt."

"Did you have a lot of secrets in your marriage?"

"No. That's the thing. Well, part of the thing. Matt and I, we were lucky. I know all about the ways a marriage can go off the rails. Men cheat, women cheat, men lie, women lie. Mistresses kill the wives, wives kill the husbands, or maybe they're fine, but cancer kills them both anyway. Sometimes it's a long, slow death. Years of little secrets turn into big distrusts, and the marriage is less about love than endurance.

"Matt and I? We never had that. We had fights. We could spend days not talking to each other. But we always came back together in the end, and we loved each other. I never cheated on him, and I'm sure he never cheated on me."

"This moment then-hiding this from him-this was unusual."

"Very. You hide little things. It's part of living with someone. You have to keep some things for yourself. But you don't hide big things. You don't hide a pregnancy, and you sure as hell don't hide an abortion. That's not who we were."

"Did he know before his death?"

"No."

"Do you think you would have told him?"

"I like to think so. But I'm not sure."

"What happened to the baby, Smoky?"

It's THE question, of course. See me, the voice said. I do, I do, in bright neon, under the light of 10,000 times 10,000-watt lamps.

"It's not so much that I aborted the baby," I say, "but why." My voice sounds empty. I am exhausted. I think I'd rather be anywhere than here, right now. "See, I wanted to kill myself, but I knew I could never do that with a baby inside me. So I asked the doctor to take care of it." Tired, tired, so tired. "It was the last little bit of Matt, right there inside me, ready to grow and be born and live. He didn't have to end there, we didn't have to end there, do you understand? Sands didn't take that from me. He didn't kill my baby. I did that. Me."

I start to weep.

"Is there more?" Father Yates asks.

"More? Of course there's more. I'm here, don't you see? I got rid of that baby so I could kill myself, but in the end I didn't even do it! The baby died for nothing! For no reason at all! I–I-" I don't want to say the words, but I need to. "I murdered that baby, Father. M-m-murdered."

I can't talk anymore. All I can do is cry. I don't cry for myself. I cry because one of the last actions in my marriage was to lie. I cry for the idea of Alexa having a baby brother or sister. Most of all, I cry for that child. She, or he, had been a chance to put something back of the things Sands had stolen. I threw that chance away in a moment of agony. It's not about the right and wrong of abortion. It's about the reasons for the decision, the pain, the selfishness, the maybes, might-haves, could-have-beens. It's about the misery of realizing you've done something terrible you can never take back, can never make up for.

I cry and Father Yates lets me. He doesn't speak, but I can feel his presence, and it comforts me.

I don't know how long it goes on. The grief blows itself out, not gone, just quieter.

"Smoky, I'm not going to throw a lot of scripture at you, here. I know that your faith isn't up to that. I'll simply say, yes, what you did, why you did it, was wrong. You know this. But what is the real sin?

What is it that makes what you did so terrible? It is the fact that you threw away the gift of life. I don't care where you think that gift came from-God, primordial soup, a little bit of both-but life is a gift, and I think you know that. I think you know it more than most people, because of what you do."

"Yes," I whisper.

"Then, don't you see? Continuing to deny yourself forgiveness, continuing to deny yourself love, is to continue the same sin-because all of it means to deny yourself life."

"But, Father-how can I let myself be happy, really happy? I can't change what I did."

"You atone. You don't forget. You don't justify. You change. You're raising the daughter of your friend. Raise her well. Be a good mother to her. Teach her to love life. You have a man in your life? Love him. If you marry him, don't keep secrets from him. You have a job that lets you imprison those who would take life from others. Do that job well, and you'll save countless lives. It's right that you've suffered for this sin, but you're not evil, Smoky, and it's time, if you won't forgive yourself, to let someone else forgive you. I've given you your penance. Maybe it will take you a lifetime to do it. Now, I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

They're just words. I'm not right with God, and I'm not sure I ever will be. I may never see the inside of a confessional booth again, and I secretly think Jesus might just have been a carpenter. But Father Yates had been right: saying it to someone else, out loud, and seeing that the world didn't end as a result, gives me a relief I had never expected. I feel. . clean. The sorrow is still there and that's okay. Only the men I hunt don't regret.

"Thanks, Father."

I don't know what else to say.

"It's my pleasure." I can almost feel him smiling. "You see? There's plenty of adventure to be had, doing what I do."

"No kidding," I agree.

Some people explore the outer world. They climb mountains, sail the oceans, hunt with the natives, so to speak. Some find their adventure in excess, as Hemingway did, running with the bulls, downing the booze, living larger than life. Then there are the Father Yates and me types, we spend our days spelunking through the inner world, where something new and maybe terrible always lies beyond the bend. "Here there be tigers" the old explorers used to put on the maps. That warning applies most to the territory between the ears and inside the heart.

To think that you could come inside this wooden box and talk to another human being about the things you could never tell anyone else. .

"Holy shit," I whisper.

"Smoky. ."

"Oh my God."

Immerse yourself in the environment. I sure as shit had done that. And the answer had been staring me in the face. It was simple, it was direct, it was right.

"Smoky, are you all right?"

I stand up. Where did he get access to their secrets? Where else?

"Father, I think I have some bad news. I think someone else has been inside your confessional, and I'm not talking about God."

29

"IT IS KIND OF A PERFECT ENVIRONMENT FOR PLANTING A bug," Alan observes. "It's dark inside, and people have their attention fixed on themselves, not on what's around them."

We're standing just outside the confessional. I'd rushed out with my tears still drying on my face.

It makes sense. We'd looked at the idea of support groups, AA meetings, things like that, but why cast such a wide and imperfect net, if secrets were what you were after? The Preacher was all about religion. If you're a religious person, who do you tell your deepest, darkest secrets to, the kinds of secrets we've been seeing on those video clips?

Your priest.

You close that confessional door and let it all hang out. I had, and I was the ultimate lapsed Catholic. The obvious worry in terms of confidentiality would be the priest, that's where the penitents' concerns would lie, not on the esoteric possibility of someone bugging the confessional.

Father Yates paces back and forth. He is troubled, angry, perhaps a little sick. I understand. I think about what we just did in there, and I shiver a little thinking about someone else listening in. It must be ten times worse for him, because he'll feel responsible.

"If this is true, it's terrible, just terrible," he mutters. "Parishioners won't feel safe coming to confession. The ones that have are going to feel betrayed. There will be crises of faith."

The poor man looks more agitated and upset than anytime since I met him. It's disturbing; I've become used to the comfort of his unflappability.

"Father, I need to ask you something."

He stops pacing. He runs a hand through his hair.

"Of course. Anything."

"I need confirmation. You said you hadn't watched any of the video clips of his victims. What about the one of Rosemary? He included that in his initial 'thesis.' "

"Absolutely not. I skipped through it. I couldn't watch that."

"I need to ask you about the secret she revealed in that clip. It was something pretty bad, and it was something he already knew. I'm going to tell you what it was, and I need to know if she revealed it to you in confession."

"I can't break the seal of confession," he protests. "Her death doesn't absolve me of that."

"Come on, Father! Even if it helps to catch her murderer? He's told us he's going to kill a child soon if we don't catch him!" I stab a finger at him. "You don't get off the hook that easy. This is a difficult issue for you, I understand, maybe some advanced canonical interpretation is required, but you need to take a hard look at the right and wrong here. Her big secret is already sitting out there on the Internet for everyone to see. How can you make that worse? Seems to me you can only make it better."

"Really?" His voice is harsh. "Let me ask you something, Smoky. If you died tomorrow, would you want me to reveal what we just talked about inside the confessional?"

The question takes me aback. My immediate, visceral response: Fuck no.

Touche, Father.

"Under normal circumstances, of course not. But if I'd been murdered like Rosemary? Forced to tell it all again, and then had it exposed to the world?" I move in close to him, make him look down to meet my eyes. "I'd want you to do whatever it took to bring that fucker to justice."

I can see the struggle going on inside him, can understand it. Father Yates is a man of conviction, a true believer who practices what he preaches. He lives his life by certain inviolate concepts. The stability of those concepts, the black and white of them, are what keeps him anchored to his faith while he toils away in the gray areas. The Rosemarys of the world are complicated. Dealing with them must be difficult. I can understand his need for certainties.

"Fine, tell me," he says. "If I think your theory has merit, I'll give you a sign. I won't speak directly to the content of Rosemary's confession, but I will give you a sign."

I can see that even this compromise has cost him.

"Thank you, Father."

I tell him about Rosemary having sex with her brother, and about how Dylan then took his own life. Father Yates's face is a mask throughout. When I finish, he looks right into my eyes and makes the sign of the cross.

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," he murmurs. "Amen."

Excitement thrills through me, overtaking everything else.

"I need access to the confessional tomorrow, Father. First thing in the morning. I'm going to get someone over here to sweep the confessional booth and the rest of your church for bugs."

He sighs. "Of course."

"Alan, can you give us a moment?"

My friend nods. "I'll meet you out by the car."

When we're alone, I gesture to the front pew. "Take a seat, Father."

He does. I sit down beside him.

"I know this is bad for you."

He's gazing at Jesus again. He doesn't seem to be finding that same peace and contentment I'd seen earlier.

"Do you?" he asks. "Do you really?"

"Yes. You feel violated. You feel like the one thing you could always count on has been shattered."

He turns to look at me, still troubled but intrigued. "That's a fair assessment."

"I know all about it. My profession betrayed me, led a killer to my house who took away my family and my face." I open my jacket to show him my weapon. "I always believed in my gun and my FBI ID. I was sure they'd keep me safe. I was certain of it, no doubt allowed." I shrug. "I was wrong."

"So what do you do then, when that happens?"

"You go to sleep, wake up the next morning, and get back to work. The work matters, Father."

He smiles now, and I'm glad to see it. He's still sad, but this is better.

"You're saying that my work matters, Smoky. Does that mean you've reconciled with God?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself. I'm still plenty pissed at God. I don't know about"-I gesture to indicate the church that surrounds us-

"all of this. What I do know is you helped me. Real help, no bullshit. So yes, if that's any indicator of what you do, your work matters."

Those troubled eyes, again. "I let the devil into my church."

"So? The first time you get knocked down you give up? Where's the tough guy from Detroit? Yes, it's fucked up. Acknowledge it, take a drink or pray or whatever it is that priests do to blow off steam, and then get back to work."

Another smile. I get the feeling it's in spite of himself. "I'll consider what you're saying. In the meantime, you need to stop swearing in my church, Smoky."

"I'll promise to stop swearing if you promise to stop feeling sorry for yourself."

He actually laughs. "It's a deal." His face gets somber. "Please catch this man."

"I'll catch him."

"Good. Now, leave me alone. I need to pray."

ALAN IS LEANING UP AGAINST the car, staring up at the starless LA sky.

"Ministering to the minister?" he asks.

"He's okay."

"How do you want to play this?"

I glance at my watch. It's after eleven.

"Let's wrap it up for tonight. I'll call Callie and James and tell them to go home. We'll hit the ground running in the morning."

"Sounds good to me. I'm beat. You call, I'll drive."

"MR. HARRISON BESTER IS APPARENTLY not a security-conscious Internet user," Callie says. "I'm sitting in front of his home right now, choosing the paper stock for my wedding invitations."

"Did the surveillance show up yet?"

"No."

"They'll be there soon, I imagine. I need you to stay put until they arrive."

She emits a long, loud, noisy sigh. "You really have no respect for the pressure I'm under. Planning a wedding, working this case, riding herd on Kirby, and trying to fit in my nightly sex-a-thon with Sam. Very stressful."

"Poor baby." I smile.

"Thank you, honey-love. That's all I need, just a little sympathy now and again. How did it go with Father Yates?"

"It was positively enlightening. I'll fill you in tomorrow. We need to start early."

"I'LL GO TO BED WHEN I feel like it, thanks. You're my superior, not my mother."

"Have it your way, James. I have a lead, though, a good one. I want everyone in early."

"I'm always early," he retorts, and then hangs up. I shake my head as I close the phone.

"How's Damien?" Alan asks.

"Charming, as always."

"You know what the strangest thing is for me about James being gay?"

"The idea of him being intimate with anyone?"

He grins. "That's right. Before he said he was gay, I honestly kind of thought of him as a eunuch. Sexless. I can't imagine anyone putting up with his shit long enough to hop in the sack with him."

"Takes all kinds to make the world go round."

"I'm glad about it."

"Why?"

"He's an irritating little fucker, and sometimes I want to punch his lights out, but he's still family. I'm glad he's got something going on in his life besides the j-o-b."

I smile at him as he drives. "You're a big old softie, Alan."

"Don't tell anyone. Hey, I was watching Father Yates when you were telling him about Rosemary and the video clip. The guy is good. Really good. I couldn't read his reaction at all."

Alan reads people the way others read books. Pupil dilation, changes in breathing pattern, even something simple like the nervous turning of a ring around a finger, all have their place in ferreting out the truth. He's saying that Father Yates is very, very good at restraining these reactions.

"Kind of interesting," Alan observes. "Maybe we should take a closer look at the priest. That kind of control is rare unless you've been trained to do it."

"He's not the guy," I say.

"You sure?"

I shouldn't be. I've been fooled before, trusting angels who turned out to be devils in disguise. But I am, this time.

"I'm sure."

"You seeing things clearly on this one?"

This is as close as Alan will ever get to asking me what happened inside that confessional booth. He knows to leave it alone, just as I would if our roles were reversed.

"Go ahead and pull his background, Alan. Dot the i's. But I'm telling you, he's not our guy."

"Okay, okay." He goes quiet as we continue to drive through the darkness. The city lights are everywhere, like dirty diamonds on a gray velvet background. This is LA, beautiful and flawed. Rough-cut forever, somehow endearing in all its shallow fumbling for greatness.

"So does this mean you're going to start going to Mass and taking Communion and all that stuff?" he asks.

"Watch that crazy talk. He helped me. He didn't fix things between me and God. I have a feeling by the time this case is over I'll have had about all the Catholicism I can stand for a while."

"Amen to that."

"What about you?"

"I haven't talked to God since the second time I saw a dead baby."

We see too much, doing what we do. The problem with believing in God, for us, is this: if God is real, either the devil's got him on the run, or he just doesn't give a damn. No God is better than a God that doesn't care.

30

"WELCOME BACK, TRAVELER," I SAY TO MYSELF AS I WALK through my door.

The words don't seem quite as futile as they had the day before. My confession left me feeling hollow, but not in a bad way. This is not a black hole inside me. It's an empty table, waiting to be set. What do I place on you? New china or the old silverware, handed down?

A little bit of both, I think.

I open up my phone and call Tommy.

"Hey," he answers.

"Were you sleeping?"

"Nope. I was thinking about you, actually."

"Good. Because I'm ready to talk, and I need to tell you something. Bonnie is staying at Alan and Elaina's. Can you come over?"

"Silly question," he says. "See you soon."

HE SHOWS UP AT MY door looking more rumpled than I've ever seen him. Tommy is not a neat freak, I've never gotten the idea that he obsesses over himself at the mirror, but he's always brushed and shaven and smelling of soap. Right now he's sporting a growth of stubble, his hair looks like it received only haphazard attention, and his shirt has a tiny food stain on the front. I reach out and touch his cheek with my palm.

"You okay? You look like hell."

"I've been waiting to hear from you."

I step back, dumbfounded. "This is about me?"

His smile is lopsided. "Strong and silent is a cliche, Smoky. I'm Latin, we wear our hearts on our sleeves. I feel things with all of me or none of me." He shrugs. "It's a problem sometimes."

I stroke his cheek again, amazed at the idea of this man losing sleep and peace of mind over me.

That's because you've been thinking you're worthless for a long time, my voice-friend is kind enough to point out. And maybe he'll agree once you tell him what you told Father Yates.

"You want a beer?" I ask.

"Sure. But I might end up sleeping on your couch if I do. I've already been partaking; I was fine to drive here, but maybe not after one more."

I smile at him. "I'll take that chance."

I grab us each a beer from the fridge and sit down on the couch, my legs curled under me. I pick at the label on the bottle with a thumbnail.

"I need to tell you something, Tommy. It's something I did, and it's pretty bad. I'm afraid that once I do, you're not going to want me anymore."

He gazes at me with those dark eyes and takes a thoughtful swig of his beer.

"Is it something you have to tell me?"

I frown. "What do you mean?"

"It's okay to keep some secrets, that's what I mean. I don't need to know everything about your past to love you right now."

The hand holding my bottle trembles for a moment. "I agree with that for the most part. But I need to tell you this. This is the thing that makes me feel like. ." I search for the words. "Like I'm not the person people think I am."

Simple, succinct. He takes another swig, puts the bottle down on the coffee table, and takes my beer from me and places it next to his. He grabs my hands and traps them between his own. He looks into my eyes.

"So tell me," he says.

And I do. I tell him all of it. How I felt lying in that hospital bed in the dark. The desire to die. The ultimate selfishness, killing my baby so it wouldn't prevent me from putting a bullet through my head. He listens as I talk, doesn't say a word, doesn't stop holding my hands, doesn't turn away. When I finish, he is silent for a time.

"Say something," I whisper.

He brings my hands up to his lips and he kisses them slowly. It's not a sexual act, not even a sensual one, but it's very intimate and comfortable. He kisses every finger on the knuckle, ends with the thumb. Turns my hands over and kisses my palms with dry lips, then traces the lines in them with a finger. He brushes a lock of hair behind my ear, and smiles.

"I love you, Smoky. Maybe you were expecting something else, but that's the something I have to say. I need you with me, and not halfway. I want all of you, every inch, every scar, every perfect part, and all the defects too."

"Are. . are you sure? I'm not easy, Tommy. Ten times in the last two years I've told myself I was all done with my past, with the things that happened to me. I'm a lot better, it's true, but I always seem to find some new pocket of fucked-up-ness waiting to mess me up. What if that never changes? You want to love someone who might always have a little bit of her past she can't let go of?"

"You are who you are because of everything that's happened in your life up to this point, Smoky. Not just the good things. I love the you that you are right now."

"And Bonnie?"

"I love her too, and she knows it."

"She does?"

"She told me she loved me a few months ago. We were watching cartoons, and she said, 'Tommy, you know I love you, right?' " He shakes his head, bemused. "She didn't even take her eyes off the TV. I acted like it was no big deal, of course I knew, and I told her I loved her too. We kept watching cartoons like nothing had happened."

"Wow." I grin. "You have all the bases covered."

He goes back to turning my hands over in his. His hands are rough, with the calluses and oversized knuckles of a boxer.

"I'm a decent guy, Smoky. I don't cheat. I'm essentially honest. I'm loyal. But I have my moments. I can be arrogant sometimes, truly selfrighteous. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I can guarantee you it'll make you crazy."

"I know you're not perfect, Tommy. You don't have to do this."

"Let me finish. I don't do drugs and I don't smoke, but once or twice a year I do like to get good and drunk. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do. It's my one excess. You've never really seen me like that."

"I'm sure I can handle it."

"I'm sure you can too, but you need to know about it. When I get that drunk, I get horny, but the sex is selfish, and of course I'll throw a tantrum when you tell me you're not interested in sleeping with a drunk. But I'll feel bad about it the next morning."

"What else?"

He's silent. Tracing my palms, over and over and over. "I've killed five people doing my job, Smoky. At least twice I've been pretty happy about it. I'm not talking about simple satisfaction, I'm talking about something that fell just shy of joy." He looks back up at me. "Of all my faults, that's probably the one that bothers me the most."

I examine this man, finding some of myself in him. For me, Tommy has always been strong but gentle, slow to anger, prone to thinking before acting. These things are true, but he also has a little bit of savage in him, the ability to get his hands sticky with the blood of an enemy and feel well satisfied about it.

"I can tell you from experience, so long as it still bothers you, you're probably okay."

"That's what I tell myself."

"Me too." Our eyes meet again. "I do love you, Tommy."

Saying the words brings me a kind of bone-shuddering relief. I've been walking under a crushing weight, the whole time thinking I was flying. This isn't the love Matt and I had. Matt met me before I was a killer, he knew me as a child, gave me my very first kiss. He was my tether to the world outside what I do, he and Alexa, and that was a beautiful thing.

Life has hacked away at me with an axe since then. Parts of me have been amputated or crippled. I've done terrible things to men who probably deserved it, and I have probably enjoyed doing these things far too much at times. I've observed the monsters, and been observed by them. They came away unchanged. But me? There's a little bit of monster in me now, and I doubt I'll ever get rid of it. Tommy sees that in me, and in himself, and shares the burden. The understanding that all that darkness is like a drug, that taking life gives you a feeling of power like no other, that the line between good and bad can be microscopic at times.

"Well, cool," he replies, grinning at his own understatement.

"But I have one other surprise to pull on you," I say. "You might not like it."

"What's that?"

"I want everything, Tommy. The whole shebang. I want my home back. So what I'm saying is, as long as all this love is in the air, then I want us to live together too."

He blinks in surprise. For a moment I'm afraid. Then his lips curve into a smile. He kisses me.

"I can agree to that."

My turn to blink. "Really? Just like that?"

"We've been together two years, Smoky. I wouldn't call it sudden."

"Good point. So that's a yes?"

"Of course it's a yes."

He takes my face in his and the kiss he gives me this time contains all the passion we've been withholding.

I come away breathless and needy. "Now that the love stuff is out of the way, can we get down to the fucking?" I growl.

"So romantic," he murmurs, kissing my neck, feeling my breasts. I pull his head away and make him look at me. "I mean it, Tommy. The last two days have been rough. I don't need tender loving tonight. Think cat in heat."

He answers with action, sweeping me into his arms and heading up the stairs to the bedroom. He dumps me on the bed without ceremony and starts to get undressed. I do the same, overwhelmed with need and the simplest desire of all: closeness.

Within the half hour, I am using God's name in proximity to the profane again, as I reach for more, more, more. In this moment, all things considered, I somehow don't think He'll mind.

31

THIS MORNING I WOKE UP WITH TOMMY'S LEG DRAPED across my belly and bedsheets that smelled of last night's sex. Most of all, I woke up happy. I was at the crest of a case that was about to get even more explosive, chasing a killer with the biggest body count of my career, and I felt good. Focused. Ready for the challenge. I bounded from bed to the shower, washing Tommy off me with some regret. I was almost done when he joined me. He bumped against me with his morning erection.

"I know what you want for breakfast," I said, moving into him.

"Make it quick. I have to get in early today."

He obliged with gusto and ten minutes later he was washing me off him while I ransacked my closet for clothes to wear. I pulled my hair back into its customary ponytail, and whistled while I fastened the straps on my shoes. Tommy appeared at the door of the bathroom, toweling his hair. I took a moment to look him over from head to toe.

"Yum, yum," I said, and he laughed.

"You out the door?"

I checked my watch and bounced off the bed. I went to him, leaning up to give him a kiss on the lips while letting my hand luxuriate in his chest hair for a moment.

"Yes, gotta run." I headed to the door of the bedroom before remembering the most important thing. I turned around. "I love you," I said.

He grinned, and that became the most beautiful part of him to me. "I love you too. Call me later."

I agreed by blowing him a kiss and went downstairs, inhaled a cup of coffee, and hit the road.

I'm almost to work now, and I allow myself a moment to bask in the fact that I've told a man that I love him again, and meant it. I remember Callie's smiling when she told me she was sure about Sam. You were right, Callie. It does feel great. I'd forgotten. The internal voice that'd been bugging me is nowhere to be found. Matt's ghost isn't around right now, though I'm sure he'll show up again at some point. I understand that hoping to dispel him and Alexa permanently is an unrealistic expectation. They'll show up forever, off and on, and not always in a good way. I imagine they'll be there at my deathbed.

It occurs to me that I've been helped by a monster once again, however indirectly. The Preacher had preached about the value of truth. I'd done what he said and sure enough, I was better for it. I am not grateful.

I ARRIVE TO FIND JAMES already there, along with Jezebel.

"Just who I wanted to see," I say. "I think I know how he's been getting his information."

I explain.

"It makes sense," James agrees. "It fits with the religious paradigm. He likes technology. Infiltrating support groups and hoping to strike up a conversation with the right victim is too hit and miss; bugging the confessionals would be precision targeting."

"If I'm right, the common denominator to all victims will be that they were practicing Catholics. We need to figure out a way to verify that without giving away the reason we want to know."

"What do we want to know?" Callie enters with her coffee in one hand, donuts in the other. Alan follows behind her. I lay out my hypothesis again.

"Me oh my," she says when I finish. "That's going to make some waves."

"I want to avoid that if we can."

James frowns. "There's an ethical question here. We have some idea of how he chooses his victims. Perhaps we should go public with this, to warn anyone who's come clean on something major in confession."

It's an interesting point, and one I hadn't considered.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," I say. "For now, we need to find out if the victims were Catholic. If they are, then we can strategize from there."

"We could do it as a questionnaire," Jezebel muses. "Call the families and ask them a series of general questions, tell them we're just looking for any and all information that might help. One of the questions could address religion. It won't raise any flags that way."

"Great idea," I say. "Draft it with James right now."

"Callie, I need you to go over to the Redeemer. Father Yates is expecting us. We need to sweep the confessional for bugs."

"That's not really my forte. Forensics, not electronics, remember?"

"Call Tommy. He's an expert in the area. He can tell you what you need."

She raises an eyebrow. "Are you two speaking again?"

"You could say that."

"I thought you had that self-satisfied 'I've just been laid' aura about you," she says.

"It's a lot more interesting than that, but I'll tell you later, not now."

She grabs her coffee and her purse, points a finger at me. "Don't think I'll forget."

"Last of my worries. Oh, and, Callie?" She stops and turns. "Call me right away with what you find."

Because I'd like to be sure my own confession isn't sitting on a tape somewhere, I don't say out loud.

I think it's unlikely; the smart money is on them removing the bugs once they finish up, so as to avoid detection, but better safe than stupid, Mom always said.

She tips me a two-finger salute.

"What about me?" Alan asks.

The office door flies open before I can answer. AD Jones walks in. His face is pale.

"We're too late."

"VALERIE CAVANAUGH, AGE TEN. FOUND dead in her bedroom this morning. Stuck in the side like the others."

We're in the AD's office. Alan is seated. I am pacing, back and forth. I want to scream or shoot something; I'm sick with guilt.

"Do we know if she's Catholic?"

AD Jones frowns. "What does that have to do with it?"

I haven't had time to bring him up to speed on my theory. I do so now.

"It would explain everything," he agrees. "How he gets his information, the religious tie-in. It all fits."

"I want to keep it under wraps, for now." I explain about the questionnaire.

"Good. Get them going on that and then I want you and Alan to head over to the Cavanaugh home."

"Could be a copycat," Alan says. "Using it for cover."

"The parents?" I ask.

He shrugs. "Anything's possible."

I have to allow that he could be right. One of the parents, or both, could have seen the news coverage about the Preacher and killed little Valerie in the same way, hoping to blame it on our serial killer. Most child victims are murdered by a parent.

But I don't think so. Not this time.

"Be discreet with that theory," AD Jones orders. "As I understand, they had to sedate the mom."

"THE FORMAT IS SIMPLE," JEZEBEL says as I read the questionnaire.

"We'll keep two people on the tip line. We've confirmed the identities of all the victims anyway. James and I will supervise the other four and we'll start calling the families. It will take us into the late afternoon, but we'll get it done."

"This is good," I say.

The questions are designed to fit with the cover story of collecting

"background" information on the victims. They are broad and innocuous. "Did she ever attend college?" "Did she have any children?"

"What social groups was she a part of?" And, buried among them all, the question we really want answered: "What, if any, religion did she practice?"

"The media won't alert on this," Jezebel says, "and the families will be eager, for the most part, to answer."

"Do it."

"THERE ARE NO BUGS IN this church, hallelujah," Callie tells me on the phone. "However, I did find a spot inside the confessional that looks to have been wood-puttied recently."

"Prints?" I ask, hoping without really expecting.

"Sorry, no. And the wood putty, while intriguing, isn't decisive. There's no way for me to confirm how long it's been there. Could be months, could be years."

"Not days?" I ask, thinking again of my own confession.

"No, older than that."

"Big coincidence that it's there at all," I say.

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to meet us at a crime scene." I explain. She's silent.

"He did it? A child?"

"Looks that way."

"Give me the address."

32

THE CAVANAUGHS LIVE IN ONE OF THE SUBURBS OF BURBANK, in a two-story home built in the early eighties that has since been updated. It's on one of those small residential streets that are unique to Los Angeles; quiet, secluded, tree lined, but just three blocks away it's all concrete and steel and rush, rush, rush.

"Media vultures are already circling," Alan observes.

"Young, white, middle-class, female, and dead," I say. "That's a lead story anywhere in the USA."

We are let in past the cordons put up to keep the media at bay. Neighbors stand outside on their lawns, horrified at the idea that a monster came so close, thankful he didn't choose their child, and unable to look away.

"Three black and whites," Alan points out. "Probably crowd control. Two unmarkeds. One's a town car, probably brass come out because of the media. The other will be the detectives in charge." He shakes his head. "Wouldn't want to be them right now."

I snort. "Them? What about us?"

"It's different when you're a cop. We're the FBI. We can do our thing here and walk away. These detectives have to stay right here in the limelight."

"I never looked at it like that."

"How do you want to do this?"

I examine the scene. Most of the media is involved in setup shots, filming the home, the surrounds, the police presence. Helicopters circle above. News reporters clutch their microphones and practice snappy summations of what they know so far. It's not them I'm worried about right now. I continue scanning and find what I was afraid of.

"Shoot," I mutter. "We have some smart ones."

I'm referring to what I consider the "real newspeople," the ones who spend more time looking than talking, noses to the air, sniffing for the slightest scent of the real story. The one I spotted is a woman. She's a blonde, in her mid-thirties, well dressed in a tailored jacket and matching dark slacks. She's not watching the house, but is looking right at our car. I can see her talking to her cameraman, and pointing toward us. She can't have seen who we are through the tinted windows, but somehow she knows anyway.

"Can't stay away from the cameras on this one forever," Alan says.

"I guess not." I sigh. "Let's just find whoever's in charge, see what we need to see, and get out of here."

We exit the car and head up the walk. I try and keep my face turned away from the cameras, but give up when I remember they'll just catch me coming out. We reach the door and are stopped by a cop in uniform.

Older, I think, more experienced. They want someone who can think on his feet standing post here.

"What's up, Alan?" the cop asks, unsmiling.

He's a big guy. Not as big as Alan, but broad. He has white hair and a rough, heavy face. I'd peg him as a meathead if not for the eyes. They're sharp, intelligent, and unfriendly.

"Need to see whoever's running the show, Ron," Alan replies. The cop sneers a little. "What does the FBI want with this scene?

Isn't this a little beneath you now?"

Alan smiles. It's as unfriendly as Ron's eyes. "Still an asshole, I see. And still blaming me for getting you busted back to uniform."

The sneer threatens to become a snarl. I decide it's time for me to step in.

"Hey-Ron, is it? You know who I am?"

He tears his eyes away from Alan with some reluctance. He examines my face, nods.

"I know you."

"Then you know there's only one reason I'm here. That dead little girl. Can you help me out, and maybe pick this up with Alan at a later date?"

His eyes flick back and forth between us. He gives off a grumbling sigh. "Hang on." He unholsters his radio and presses the transmit button. "Detective Alvarez?"

A moment's pause and a reply comes back. "Go."

"I got two feebs out here. Alan Washington and Smoky Barrett. They're asking for access."

A longer pause this time. "Let 'em in."

"Roger that."

Ron reholsters his radio and opens the door to the home without another word. Those hostile eyes follow Alan all the way in.

"What was that about?" I ask once we're inside the foyer.

"Short version? Ron Briscoe was a homicide detective. Pretty good one. He ran a case where a guy was strangling little girls. He knew who the guy was, but couldn't get the evidence he needed. So he cut corners. Planted evidence. I found out about it and spoke up. The guy walked and Briscoe got busted back to uniform."

"What happened to the bad guy?"

"The father of one of the victims blew the perp's brains out. Father's in prison now."

I stare at my friend, fascinated and aghast at this revelation. He'd said it all so matter-of-factly, but I know it has to be a burden for him.

"Here comes a suit," Alan murmurs to me. "Police Commissioner Daniels himself."

Fred Daniels has been the LAPD commissioner for over ten years now. He's in his late fifties, but remains more vital than men younger than him. He's tall and thin, with a grizzled, military haircut and the hard face of a drill sergeant. He's reputed to walk the line between fair and ruthless, with ruthless winning more often than not. He approaches us and puts out a hand to shake mine.

"Agent Barrett," he says.

"Commissioner."

He shakes Alan's hand as well.

"You used to be LAPD, Agent Washington, is that right?"

"Ten years in homicide, Commissioner."

"Nice to know some of the people at the FBI come from the streets. No offense, Agent Barrett."

"None taken."

"You're here because you think this is connected with the Preacher?"

Straight to business.

"We're examining the possibility," I reply.

"Crime scene is upstairs," he says, pointing to the staircase.

"Alvarez is a good detective. Don't step on his toes." He'd been holding his police cap under his arm. He pulls it out and fits it onto his head. "I'm going to go feed all the piranhas with cameras."

He heads out the door, almost running into Callie as he leaves.

"Wooo, the commissioner," she breathes, batting her eyes in fauxgroupie fashion. "I feel special to be here already."

"Do you know Alvarez?" I ask Alan.

"Only his name."

I sigh. "There's no use in putting this off. Let's go find him and see the scene."

RAYMOND ALVAREZ IS A SHORT man, no more than five-five. He's handsome enough, and I see a wedding band through the latex glove covering his left hand. He's full of energy and he talks with his hands, pointing and gesturing.

"Dad's with Mom at the hospital. She freaked out. Started destroying the kitchen. Like, throwing chairs through the windows, smashing dishes. She cut up her hands pretty bad, bleeding all over the place, they had to forcibly sedate her."

"You see it?"

"Her? Yeah. Seemed real."

Sometimes the guilty feign hysteria to throw us off. It's difficult to do well. Real grief, the kind that comes from finding out that a loved one has been killed, is spontaneous and anything but rote. Some people scream, some wail, some go wooden, some faint dead away.

"Can we see Valerie?" I ask.

"This way," he says.

He doesn't ask why. There simply is no substitute for seeing the corpse at the scene of the crime. He leads us down the hall, past a master bedroom with beige carpet and white walls. The carpet continues everywhere, as do the walls; safe, unimaginative California at its best. We pass photos hung on the walls, every frame black, each one the same style. The Cavanaughs are a handsome couple, he with the short blond hair, she with the long blonde hair, both with the whitest teeth I've ever seen. They smile and show all those teeth in every photo. Beautiful people. A girl I assume to be Valerie appears in a number of them, also blonde and smiling with the white teeth passed down to her by her parents.

I catch my own cynicism and try to rein it in. There's nothing in any of these photos or those smiles that says their happiness was ungenuine or that the people themselves are shallow. They're not smiling now, I think. It occurs to me that Alexa was ten when she died, that Bonnie was ten when she came into my life. A magic number.

"Here we go. Glove up and put on the paper booties," Alvarez says, pointing to the boxes placed outside the room.

We each comply, and I smell that smell now, the singular mix of latex and blood.

We enter the room. It's pink everywhere, little princess to the max. The walls are pink, the bed is a canopy with frilly pink bedsheets and comforter. Various stuffed animals decorate both bed and floor. There's a small desk-pink-with a computer set up on it. The monitor, I note, is on. Valerie is what commands our attention, the attention of everyone in this room. She is lying on her back, arms folded across her chest. Her eyes are open wide. Her blonde hair fans out around her head. Blood has run from the hole in her side to soak the pink bedding and the beige carpet with a bright contrast of burgundy. Her mouth is closed, the white teeth not in evidence here.

"She's naked," Alan observes.

"The posing is still not sexual," I point out. "It's more like he's sending them out as they came in."

"Yeah."

I turn to Alvarez. "Who found her?"

"The dad. She didn't come downstairs for breakfast, he came up to check on her, found her this way."

"The father didn't touch her," Callie says. "Strange."

She refers to the fact that Valerie remains posed as she died, something we can tell by the pattern of blood flow from her side.

"I asked him about that," Alvarez responds. "He said he could tell she was dead. The way her eyes are open, and how white she is."

"I can see it," I admit.

There's no spark of life evident in Valerie. She has the appearance of a cold, soft mannequin.

"Evidence of a point of entry?" Alan asks.

"Two. There's a door that leads from the backyard into the garage, and there's a door that leads from the garage into the house. Both show evidence of skilled tampering. If he did it, he opened the gate that leads into the backyard, forced door number one, then door number two and gained access."

"No alarm system?" I ask.

"No. And no dog. Bad luck."

"Still, pretty bold," I say. "Coming in here at night, killing her while the parents were sleeping."

"That fit with your guy?" Alvarez asks.

"He's a risk-taker and he warned us he was going to kill a child."

He indicates the bed and Valerie.

"What about this? Does it seem authentic?"

"I only have two other scenes to compare it to. It presents the same, except for the age of the victim, which is troubling. We held something back regarding his MO." I tell him about the cross the Preacher inserts into the wounds postmortem. "If it's not there, this is a copycat."

"In which case we'll have to take a hard look at the parents."

Alvarez sighs. "Great. I'm not sure which is better."

"Can we get this checked out now, honey-love?" Callie asks. "The coroner on-site?"

"He's out front getting the body wagon ready. I'll call him in."

"HOW FAR IN WAS THE cross placed in the other victims?"

Dr. Weems, the coroner, is a middle-aged man with a precise, fastidious air about him.

"Just under the skin, against the rib cage," Callie answers. "You should be able to feel it if you palpate."

"It would be irregular to remove it here," he muses.

"But not illegal," I point out, "and if you film it, you'll have things covered from an evidentiary standpoint. Time isn't on our side, Doctor."

To his credit, he doesn't hesitate for long. "Very well. Detective Alvarez, if you can get the crime scene recorder in here, I'll examine her and remove the cross if it exists."

Recording crime scenes and their processing with video cameras has become common practice in many investigations, especially the high-profile ones. It is a double-edged sword; if procedural mistakes are made, they're caught on camera and become fodder for defense counsel. The reverse is true as well, though; if the camera says it's so, it's so.

The man wielding the small camera is introduced as Jeff, a young, brown-haired man who doesn't look old enough to be here. He's unfazed, however; he turns the camera on Valerie's corpse without blinking.

Dr. Weems kneels down to examine the wound in Valerie's side.

"Appears to be a hole, approximately one-half inch in diameter, not ragged. The instrument used would have been pointed but very sharp. Incision marks extend out from the sides of the initial puncture. These are clean cuts, probably made by a scalpel or similar blade." He uses his fingers to feel around the wound, gently. "I can feel a hard object underneath the skin."

Adrenaline rushes through me. I am excited, then ashamed by that excitement. Her death should have affected me for longer. All I can think about now is what she can give me, not what was taken from her.

Dr. Weems looks up and into the camera. "Photographs have already been taken of the wound pattern. I'm going to try and retrieve the item." He grabs a small satchel I hadn't noticed before. It's a black medical bag. It looks like a throwback to the 1950s. His kit, I think.

I find this self-conscious nod to style via retro accessory a little creepy. Things that deal in the dead should have their aesthetics confined to function. He opens it up and hunts through it until he finds what amounts to an oversized pair of tweezers.

"If anyone here is squeamish," he says, bending toward the wound, "please look away or leave. We don't need vomit contaminating the crime scene."

No one moves. Jeff films away, unperturbed.

Dr. Weems sticks the tweezers into the hole without hesitation or ceremony.

"I'm contacting a hard object," he confirms. "I need to rotate it to pull it out without damaging the skin further. Wait a moment. . there." He pulls the tweezers out slowly.

"Son of a bitch," Alan breathes.

A silver cross. It has the same approximate dimensions as the others.

Weems deposits the cross into an evidence bag after photographs and video have been taken.

"So it is your guy," Alvarez says.

"It appears that way," I agree. "The question now is: Why her? He goes for people with big secrets. What kind of a secret could a tenyear-old girl have?"

"I had a fair number by the time I was ten," Callie says. "But then, I was always ahead of my time."

My cell phone chimes.

"Barrett."

"It's James. Three things. We're moving well on questioning the families. So far, it's a hundred percent on the victims as practicing Catholics."

Another adrenaline rush.

"That's excellent, James. What else?"

"We need to consider pulling surveillance from the Bester home. I checked into his whereabouts during the Lisa Reid murder. He was on a business trip in San Francisco."

I frown. "We need more than that. ."

"More ties into the third thing."

"Go on."

"Someone from Computer Crimes has been coordinating with the user-tube staff every half-hour or so to check for attempted new postings by the Preacher."

"And?"

"They caught one. Concerning Valerie Cavanaugh."

"Damn it!" I rub my temples.

"Back to Bester: this new clip wasn't posted from his IP. Surveillance says he was at home and in bed when Valerie Cavanaugh was killed. It's not him, Smoky."

I sigh. "Agreed. Pull the detail." I lean forward a little, feeling something inside me narrow to a focus. "Now, tell me about this new clip."

He pauses. A little too long, I feel. "It's different. He didn't film her just before killing her."

I'm perplexed. "I don't understand."

"I e-mailed you the clip. Watch it. It's bad, very bad. It's going to devastate this family."

The usual acerbity is absent from James's demeanor. He sounds quiet, troubled. This, more than anything else, replaces that rush with a slight chill.

"How bad?"

That too-long pause again.

"It's a nightmare."

THE CAVANAUGHS HAVE A WIRELESS Internet connection and Callie has her laptop, so we find ourselves in the living room, checking my e-mail and downloading the clip James had sent me. I am sitting next to Callie on the couch. Alan is next to her, Alvarez stands behind us all.

"Ready?" she asks.

I nod. "Go ahead."

She clicks to begin and the familiar black screen and white lettering goes by. We arrive at the hands and the rosary, the stark light and the spare wooden table.

"I realize this is, now, most likely going straight to law enforcement officials," he begins. "A temporary problem, let me assure you. There are too many ways to get the truth out. Having said that, let us discuss the relationship of truth and time, as it is apropos here. Truth is not concerned with age. A child is a child, yes, but a soul is a soul is a soul, and truth applies to all. The devil can come in many guises, and whether you are ten or eighty, confession and contrition will always be your one and only salvation. And that is the purpose of this particular part of my opus, to demonstrate two things: truth is ageless, but that truth without contrition is a lie all its own." He rubs the rosary with a thumb. "Valerie Cavanaugh comes from a good family. She has God-fearing parents. They demand much from her, and by all appearances, she has provided. Valerie has always been a straight-A student. She practices her piano lesson one hour a day, every day. She is on a swim team, and has brought home trophies. She has been active with her parents in volunteer activities, helping those less fortunate."

"All true," Alvarez notes.

"Appearances can be deceiving," the Preacher continues. "And confession to the greatest crimes without remorse makes a lie of confession itself."

THE SINS of VALERIE CAVANAUGH 33

"LOOK AT ME, KITTY," VALERIE SAYS.

The cat turns toward her voice, meows once. The cat has beautiful green eyes and Valerie smiles.

"Good kitty," she says, and pets the cat behind the ears. It's a pretty nice day. The sun is out but the heat isn't oppressive. Daddy calls it a "California fall." There's a slight breeze. Valerie closes her eyes and turns her face up to the sky, letting the breeze cool her skin and ruffle her hair with its wind-fingers. She continues to rub the cat behind the ears.

Valerie is in the backyard of her house. Mommy and Daddy are out for the day, and Emma, the babysitter, is snoozing on the couch. It's one of the few times Valerie finds herself alone, and she cherishes the moment.

The backyard is large. They have a patio and a pool and a lot of green green grass. Mommy spent a lot of time designing the landscaping herself and supervising the workers. (Do things halfway and you'll end up a halfway person, Mommy always says.) Valerie is sitting behind a line of hedges that forms a barrier between the rest of the yard and one of the tall, painted cinder-block walls that divides them from the world outside.

"Good kitty," she murmurs again.

The cat meows. It's not a happy meow, and Valerie can't really blame the poor kitty. She's all wrapped up in a towel, after all.

"Sorry, kitty," she says, "but I can't have you scratching me all up."

Valerie wants to wait longer, to enjoy the solitude for a few moments more, but she knows she can't count on Emma sleeping forever. She sighs.

"Better get to it, kitty. Do things halfway and you'll be a halfway person."

She places the towel-wrapped cat on its back in her lap and puts her hands around the cat's neck. She begins to squeeze. She doesn't squeeze too hard or too fast-she doesn't want the kitty to die too quick, after all. Part of the fun is savoring the moment. Valerie keeps her eyes on the cat's eyes the entire time. She's not sure what it is she's looking for. Maybe that exact moment of death, when the spark of life goes out. Who knows? But it's an endless source of fascination. Something happens in there, that's for sure!

She can feel the cat struggling against her, trying to escape the towel.

Sorry, kitty, but I know what I'm doing. You'll never get free. She giggles, once.

Valerie is aware of her heart beating fast in her chest. There's a somewhat undefinable sensation running through her. A kind of excitement she can't classify. She doesn't try all that hard to figure it out. The doing of the thing and the feeling it gives her is enough. The cat's struggles become frantic. Valerie's heart beats and that excitement keeps pace. Another moment passes, and the cat expires. Valerie continues to squeeze, unaware that her eyes are wide and that her tongue is protruding from between her lips.

The moment passes. The cat is seeing nothing. Valerie relaxes her grip. She'd been holding her breath; she exhales.

"Good kitty," she says again, and scratches the dead cat behind the ears.

She likes that there is no meow in response now. She likes that a lot.

Valerie gives herself a minute to relax, to luxuriate in this brief moment of being her true self.

It's hard acting like a normal girl all the time, she reflects. This is when I feel the most free.

But Valerie knows, even at ten, that she has to keep her real face hidden. She's been very careful, since she started killing the cats. She's paced herself, and she's made sure to bury the bodies here, behind the hedge. It's been difficult, true, but she can wait. She's seen the future. She'll get older, and someday she'll have a lot more freedom. Someday, she thinks, she'll even be able to drive. Who knows what she'll be able to start killing then?

She's unaware that these thoughts have brought a grin to her face. Those white teeth flash in the sun and her blonde hair flutters in the breeze, and she pets the dead cat in her lap as she dreams.

"JESUS CHRIST," ALAN MUTTERS.

I'm silent, as is Callie.

It was obvious that Valerie was unaware she was being videotaped. The video itself was black-and-white and high quality. The angle it had been shot at gives me an idea. I stand up and march to the sliding glass door leading into the backyard.

Once outside, I stand and look. I see the pool, clean and blue. The grass is green and cut and perfect. I see the row of hedges on the right and left. They form an unbroken line going from the front of the yard to the back on either side. There's about a one foot space between the hedges and the cinder-block walls that act as a fence. Not much space, but enough for a ten-year-old.

I choose the line on the right and walk over. Short as I am, I have trouble seeing past the hedge tops, so I lean forward, placing my hands against the wall and stand on my tiptoes.

The grass ends at the hedges, which come all the way down to the ground. Beyond the hedge line is plain dirt. I can see little patches of turned earth that had been patted flat.

Eight or ten, I think. Probably all dead cats.

Valerie Cavanaugh, sweet blonde Valerie of the perfect hair and teeth, had been a little psychopath.

I close my eyes and recall the video, that angle. I open them again and turn to the right. I march along the hedge line to the end and lean forward. I see what I was looking for.

"THERE'S A PINHOLE CAMERA PLACED near the end of the hedge line," I say, walking back into the house. "She had no idea he was watching her."

"How'd he know where to put it?" Alvarez asks.

"Not sure," I lie.

Callie raises a single eyebrow but says nothing. Alan studies his fingernails.

"Let's finish the clip," I say, taking a seat again. Callie had paused it when I went into the backyard. She hits play again now.

We watch as Valerie digs a hole with a gardening trowel. She removes the towel from around the dead cat. She holds the cat's corpse up by the scruff of its neck, stares into its eyes for a moment, shrugs, and drops it into the hole. She fills it back in and takes care to feather the dirt and pat it flat. She folds the towel. We see her face once before she stands up to exit the hedgerow. She looks blissful and beautiful, untroubled and at peace.

The video holds for a minute, recording the cinder-block wall, the hedges, that slightly turned earth, before cutting back to the Preacher and his ever-present rosary beads.

"You see?" he says. "Evil can be ageless. If evil can be ageless, then so can the necessity for truth. Take note, parents. Young Valerie was an extreme example, but she serves as a warning. What are your children doing that you'd least expect?"

He shifts his hands again, laying them flat on the table.

"To the second part of this particular lesson-the fact that lack of contrition can make confession itself a lie."

A still image appears. It's from the video of Valerie strangling the cat. He's plucked this image from the instant where her mask slipped the most. We see the wide eyes, the dark joy, the tip of her pink tongue in the corner of her mouth. It's a moment of ecstasy. The Preacher continues talking as a voice-over, keeping this image of Valerie on the screen. "Imagine this child confessing to this crime. Imagine her weeping crocodile tears as she sobbed about the dark thing inside her, about her battles against the temptations Satan had thrown her way. Can you see that? Now, look again at this picture, and ask yourself: Could the monster you see here ever be truly contrite?"

No, I think. She would have used her youth, those white teeth, that angelic face, would have used them to manipulate and hide. But she wouldn't have felt sorry, not ever.

"Remember: truth alone is not enough, because truth is still a lie unless it is accompanied by regret and the desire to right the wrong."

The clip ends abruptly.

"Jesus." Alvarez whistles. "No pun intended. This is going to kill her parents. You ever seen anything like that? Like Valerie?"

"It happens," I say. "Some psychopaths become what they are because of environment, while others appear to be born that way. They grow up in good homes, with no abuse, lots of love and opportunity, but still end up twisted. We don't know why."

"Gives me the creeps."

I stand up and examine the downstairs area. The couch is a dark brown, the beige carpet and white walls continue. It's all very clean, all unremarkable. Not the home of a child-monster. My eyes roam the walls until they find what I was looking for: a wooden crucifix. There you are, I think. She hid behind you and all this beige. Catholicism, confession, this is the answer.

"We need to go," I tell Alvarez.

"That's it?" he asks, surprised.

"We know who killed her," I say. "Now we need to find him."

WE WALK THE GAUNTLET. CAMERAS flash and newsmen and — women shout my name. I've been recognized; they smell blood.

"You're a regular celebrity, honey-love," Callie says. We climb in the car and shut the door.

"Why'd you hold back on the Catholic angle with Alvarez?" Alan asks.

"Because it's unconfirmed and it's a bomb waiting to go off."

"True," Callie muses. "I suppose a lot of people will be upset to find that they've been on candid camera during their private confession."

"Would she have gone to confession so young?" Alan asks.

"I did," I reply. "It's all about the 'age of discretion.' The point where the child starts to struggle with and consider right and wrong, good and evil. It's a contentious issue. Some people feel that pushing a child into confession too early is tantamount to stealing their childhood; others feel that if you wait too long, you run the risk of letting them settle into bad moral habits. Seven or eight is generally considered an acceptable median age."

Alan shakes his head. "Thank God I was raised Baptist. You Catholics have too many rules for me."

I scowl at him. " 'You Catholics'? Bite your tongue. Let's get back to the offices. James and Jezebel should be done questioning the victims' families soon. If I'm right, and I'm almost certain I am now, we need to plan out just how to let the shit hit the fan."

ALAN DRIVES. CALLIE FOLLOWS US in her own car.

"Weird, isn't it?" Alan asks.

"What?"

"We came to the Cavanaughs' all ready to feel messed up about a little girl getting killed. Now? After what we saw her doing, I don't know what to feel."

I think about an older Valerie, beautiful, breathtaking and formidable, wrapping those fingers around a human throat, white teeth flashing as she peered into her victim's eyes and grinned and grinned and grinned.

Good kitty, she might whisper. What a good, good kitty you are.

34

"WE'RE MISSING CONFIRMATION ON TWENTY-ONE," JEZEBEL says. "Either because we can't reach the families, or there are no families to reach. Of those we have questioned, it's confirmed. All practicing Catholics."

I knew this already, at some level, but the full meaning only hits me now that it's been confirmed. I sit down in a free chair near Alan's desk and take a moment to stare at all those names on the dry-erase board.

"Wow," I manage.

"I did a little research," James says. "There's never been a violation of the Catholic confessional on this scale."

"I'm sure that's true," I murmur.

I'm thinking about Father Yates pacing in the church last night and am transposing onto this action an image of the Pope. I hate this case. It's put me in direct contact with the Director of the FBI, in proximity to the President of the United States, and I'm sure something of this magnitude will, factually, reach the Pope's ears.

I stand up and make sure I have everyone's attention.

"We've worked high-profile cases before, but this is a whole new playing field. This goes nowhere. Nowhere. No pillow talk with spouses or partners, don't tell your dog if you have one. Got it?"

They all nod. No one shows any signs of disagreement. Maybe the sober truth has hit them too.

"James, I want you to sit down with Callie, Alan, and Jezebel and I want you to start going through that database you made. Look for and list the most probable churches each victim would have visited."

"Where are you going, honey-love?" Callie asks.

"I'm going to see AD Jones to give him the bad news."

"YOU SURE ABOUT THIS?" AD Jones asks.

"Yes, sir. We have corroborating data now. We know from the Cavanaugh scene that he likes to use covert surveillance. We have confirmation on the Catholic connection with the victims' families we've been able to reach. How else could he have known what he knew about these people? Besides, he led us there."

"How's that?"

"That note in Lisa Reid's journal. What do I collect? That's the question and that's the key. And then in those first video clips, he tells us that everything we need to know to catch him is right there in the clips. Plus, the affect of most of the victims fits; they seemed shocked to find out that he already knew what their secrets were and there was no evidence of recognition."

I'd missed this before, and I kick myself for it now. They'd all thought their secrets were still secret. Why hadn't I seen that?

Was it because I was still too blinded by my own?

AD Jones doesn't say anything for a little while. He laces his hands behind his head and stares off, thinking.

"This is a political nightmare, Smoky. Not something I usually care about, but in this case it'll probably hamper catching this guy. If we go to the Catholic Church and we go in heavy they're likely to tell us to fuck off and close ranks."

"Yeah," I say. "Priests touching boys? Bad, bad, bad. Bugs in the confessionals? Wow. I think we need to show them we'll play ball. Make them allies, not enemies."

He frowns. "How do you propose to do that?"

"This doesn't affect the entirety of the United States, as far as we know. We clamp down on this locally, keep it confined to my team and you and the Director. No one else. The Director gets hold of someone in the church who has some juice and briefs them. He gets them to arrange access for us and we agree to keep the whole thing quiet. We don't even need to let the local priests in on it if they don't want us to."

"What about Father Yates?"

"He has no interest in this getting out, believe me. He's loyal to his church, and I imagine they know that."

"It could work," he allows.

"It will work. I doubt the Catholic Church is different from any other bureaucracy when it comes to some things. People guard their territories and their budgets and work hard to keep shit from rolling uphill. I'll bet even money that they won't want to let the Pope know if they don't have to."

"You make them sound like us," he says, only half joking.

"It's survival of the species taken to the level of the group organism, that's all."

"True enough."

"I like this approach better anyway. The Preacher's whole deal is shaking things up. He thinks he's a prophet, preaching about the truth, getting people to think and talk and wonder about God. The less chaos we allow him to create, the better I'll feel."

"Agreed. I'll call the Director now."

"YOU'RE ON THE NEWS," JEZEBEL tells me when I walk back into the office.

"Good thing there's no TV in here."

She smiles. "Not to worry, I can access a feed right here on the computer." She points to Alan's monitor. "May I?"

"Sure."

She taps a few keys and enters a password. A moment later a different desktop appears on the screen.

"This is actually my computer we're looking at. I'm controlling it remotely." She opens a program and a video player fills the screen. The video begins to play.

The newswoman looks familiar.

"She was at the Cavanaugh home," I say, placing her. "The smart one."

The one who'd noticed us pulling up and who had directed her cameraman to point his lens our way.

I watch as we climb out of the car and the newswoman begins her voice-over.

"This morning a young girl was found dead in her own bedroom, in this quiet suburb of Burbank. It didn't take long for a large police presence to develop, which is not, in and of itself, surprising. What is surprising is the arrival on scene of this woman: FBI Special Agent Smoky Barrett."

"Hey, what about me?" Alan jokes.

"Special Agent Barrett became known to most Californians and many Americans almost three years ago. She herself became the victim of a home invasion. Joseph Sands, a serial killer Agent Barrett was hunting, turned the tables on his pursuer. He entered her home at night, murdered her husband and ten-year-old daughter, and raped and disfigured Agent Barrett herself."

A photograph of me, scars and all, appears on-screen.

"Agent Barrett recovered and continued her job with the FBI, a move debated by many at first. The debate seems to have died down; results tend to do that. Agent Barrett has continued to do her job and do it well. Which brings us to the burning question: why is the lead serial murder investigator in Southern California at the Cavanaugh home? The only conclusion this reporter can come to is that the death of ten-year-old Valerie Cavanaugh is tied to the man who calls himself the Preacher."

A recap of the Preacher's exploits follows, along with his promise to kill a child if we didn't catch him first.

"Stroke of luck," Callie observes. "They haven't seen Valerie's clip."

I consider the Preacher's promise that he'd find a way to promulgate the truth in spite of us. I wouldn't count on that luck lasting.

"How much coverage has the Preacher been getting?" I ask Jezebel.

"A lot. Worldwide. There's plenty of dialogue about truth, religion, the topics he soapboxed about. He's got a surprising number of supporters."

"Supporters?" Alan says. "What the fuck is there to support? He's a murderer."

"It's not so shocking," James says. "There's plenty of precedence, and it's not confined to Catholicism. He's preaching a totalitarianism of faith, an all or nothing 'giving of self to God.' That'll always have support among the faithful. Extremism and fanaticism go hand in hand with religion. They always have."

"The connection's also been made between you and the Reids,"

Jezebel says. "Someone was nice enough to let a reporter know that you and your team were in Virginia."

"Nature of the beast," Alan says.

"Have any of them mentioned the victims' Catholic connection?"

"No. Only the Preacher's."

"Good."

I brief them all on my conversation with AD Jones and my proposed handling of the confessional information.

"Probably the best move," Alan agrees. "They're a little touchy about scandals."

"My mother is Catholic," James says, out of nowhere. "She loves going to confession. The idea of someone violating that would kill her. The big question now is, how is he doing it?"

"Finish making that list."

"AGENT BARRETT?"

I'd answered a call on my cell phone from a number I didn't recognize.

"Yes?"

"This is Cardinal Adam Ross. Of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles?"

"Oh. Hello, Cardinal." I frown. "Is 'cardinal' the correct form of address?"

"Cardinal is fine. So is Adam, if you like."

"Let's stick with cardinal, then. How can I help you?"

"I think that question goes both ways, Agent Barrett. I received a call about ten minutes ago from the Director of the FBI. A very disturbing call. I'm in my car on the way to your office right now. Can you see me?"

The man's manners are impeccable in spite of the obvious tension in his voice. I had expected imperious; he's the picture of politeness.

"I'll be here, Cardinal."

AD JONES WHISTLES. "THAT WAS fast. I got off the phone with the Director less than a half hour ago."

"How did that go?"

"He agrees with your plan. He says to keep it under wraps permanently if at all possible."

"Do you know Cardinal Ross, sir?"

"I've never met him. I'm not exactly the churchgoing type. But if he's on the Director's speed dial, he's a mover and a shaker. Try and treat him accordingly."

"We play well with others as long as they return the favor, sir."

"ISN'T CARDINAL ONE OF THE stepping-stones on the road to wearing the Pope hat?" Callie asks.

"Technically, any Catholic male who fit the criteria could become Pope," James says. "In practice, it's reserved for the cardinals. The last time a non-cardinal was elected Pope was 1378."

"How does someone become a cardinal?" I ask.

"You're appointed by the Pope. They're called 'the princes of the church.' It's a big deal, obviously, and it comes after years of service. You'd be a priest first, then probably an auxiliary bishop, then a full bishop and then an archbishop-which is also a position appointed by the Pope. Cardinals are then chosen from the archbishops.

"The cardinal electors are the most powerful individuals in the Catholic Church other than the Pope himself. They appoint the new Pope when the old one dies. There are usually about a hundred twenty of them, which is a very, very small per capita when you consider the overall size of the Catholic Church. Roughly one or two cardinals per eight or nine million Catholics."

"I'd imagine they have a direct line to the Pope?" I ask.

"Yes."

This gives me a better picture of the man who's on his way up in the elevator to see me. He'll be smart, hard-nosed, and used to the accoutrement of power and command. Most important, for our purposes, he'll be someone who can make decisions and issue orders that others will listen to.

Hopefully he's not an asshole.

"Do you think they wear anything under those robes?" Callie asks.

"Slacks, dear, we wear slacks."

We turn to the voice, which is as rich and baritone as any of us could have imagined coming from a cardinal.

Cardinal Ross is very tall, nearly six foot four. He's got silver hair and is thin, though not unhealthily so. He has a long face to go with his height, and while it's not unattractive, it has recorded the years. I estimate his age at just over sixty. He has dark eyes that sweep over us with a certain weight, a definite gravitas. He's dressed in simple clerical black; slacks, shirt, jacket, and the white collar with a large silver cross hanging down. The simplicity of his garments don't lessen his presence; the man fills the room.

He's come alone, it seems, which surprises me.

I hold out my hand. "Welcome, Cardinal."

He takes the hand and shakes it, smiling down at me as he does. He holds the grip for a little longer than needed, letting his eyes take in my scars.

"Thank you for having me."

I introduce him to the rest of my team. He looks around the office with some interest.

"So you catch murderers here."

"We try, yes."

He walks over to the dry-erase board, examines the names. Paces around the desks, nodding in what seems like approval.

"The most important jobs always seem to get done in the humblest surroundings." He glances our way and smiles. "Before anyone takes offense, I'm not knocking your offices. I mean it as a compliment."

"We're a simple folk," Callie drawls.

"Somehow I think that statement is both true and false, Agent Thorne. You have a narrowness of focus and a terrible simplicity of purpose, but you understand complexities of evil that are beyond me."

Callie grins. "You can certainly lay it on thick."

He laughs. It's a nice laugh. Rich and unself-conscious. "Occupational hazard. I'm not being dishonest with my praise, I assure you."

"That's nice, but can we cut to the chase?" James asks. He's put my own words to voice, though with more hostility than I'd have liked. Cardinal Ross takes it in stride, unruffled.

"Indeed. Your Director called me. He briefed me on your suspicions regarding this man bugging our confessionals. I'm sorry to ask, but can you please explain how you came to this conclusion?"

I tell him about the Preacher, still holding back on the matter of the crosses in the wounds. I mention the conversation with Father Yates, his unspoken confirmation regarding Rosemary Sonnenfeld. Cardinal Ross rubs his forehead when I am done, and looks very, very troubled.

"Do you mind if I sit down?"

Alan gives him a chair.

"I understand. And agree, of course. There's no other way he could have known. This is terrible, terrible, terrible. If this got out it would shake the faithful badly."

"You sure you're not just worried about more lawsuits?" James sneers. "Your church did a fine job of hiding pedophiles for many years."

"James!" I snap.

The cardinal holds up a hand. "No, Agent Barrett. I've come to accept that I deserve any chastisement about that matter sent my way. I never personally hid a pedophile priest, but members of my church did, and it was shameful. My concern isn't with public relations, in spite of what you might think. This is a matter of faith. Have any of you ever given confession?"

"I have," I say. "But not since I was younger."

Alan keeps his face bland at my little white lie.

"Not me," Callie says. "A good thing too. I'd have made some poor priest blush."

James doesn't reply.

"Can you imagine how you'd feel if you found out someone besides your priest and God was listening in? It goes beyond scandal-it is a violation of one of the most basic, beautiful, and trusted bastions of Catholicism. Priests have died rather than break the seal of confession."

"Cardinal," I say, "we're not on a crusade here. We don't need to make this public. What we do need is cooperation and access."

"You'll get it, of course. You'd get it regardless. But I do appreciate the reassurances. The truth is, it will come out sooner or later. I'm sure someone else will consider the facts as you did and come to the same conclusion. What you will be giving me is time."

"It wouldn't hurt if the man responsible was captured either," I point out.

"I can't deny the truth of that. What do you need from me?"

"We've made a list of all the victims and have cross-referenced their geographical locations with nearby churches. I need to reach every one of these churches, and I need to find out if these victims were parishioners. Once we confirm they were, we need to speak to the priest in charge and see if they remember our man."

"I can provide you with three members of my staff immediately. They can make the call and tell each priest to cooperate fully, and then pass the phone to you."

I blink, taken aback.

"That'd be perfect."

"I'll arrange it the moment I leave."

35

JEZEBEL, CALLIE, ALAN, AND JAMES ARE IN THE PHONE ROOM with the three priests the cardinal provided us. I observed for a little while. The cardinal's men are all business, no questions; serious men, used to serious tasks. They are there to do what they've been told to do.

There's a definite "when I say jump. ." phenomenon within the church hierarchy, apparently. The cardinal's men would call and get someone on the phone without much delay. They'd relay in terse words that they were passing the phone to a member of the FBI and that the priest at the other end was to answer any and all questions. One of my guys would take the phone and do the interview. They'd pass it back to the cardinal's man, who'd make it clear that not a word was to be spoken about this, ever. Then they'd hang up. Simple, no muss, fuss, or complaints.

I've left them to it and taken a moment for myself inside the now empty Death Central. So much change has happened in the last few days. I've flown apart and come back together again. The Preacher let the world know he existed and I've followed his trail to the dark of the confessional booths.

I need a moment to step back, to look at the forest, not the trees. I need to try and see the man we're after.

He is smart. His ideas are not new, but his take on them has depth, care, a certain reverence. He's not hiding another motive behind the words he's saying. He believes them, they are what drives him. So what are those words?

They come down to truth, lies, and sin, and they are wrapped in religious significance. He hasn't taken a philosopher's path, where truth is a generality. His take on truth revolves around the specificity of salvation. What does it tell me?

He was raised Catholic.

I nod to myself. Yes. He grew up around the imagery, the back and forth of guilt and worry and hope mixed with mild self-loathing and self-forgiveness. He grew up seeing Christ on the cross and with the obligation to feel something about that.

Fine. Why, then, does he need to tell the world about it?

Because he thinks the world is not listening.

The world? No. That's the visible manifestation. We're dealing with a serial killer here. This isn't a man who had a strong belief and devoted himself to getting the word out. This is a man who's spent twenty years or more looking for those with the worst secrets so he could murder them on camera. However you slice it, whatever the supposed belief system constructed around it, murder is still always an act of anger. It may or may not be anger at the person being murdered. In fact, in the case of serial killers, it's most often misplaced rage. Mom or Dad, killed over and over and over again. Someone or something was not listening at some point in his life. Someone or something intimate to him, someone or something important and entwined with his sense of self. The consequences of this angered him, and now he's making sure that this particular message never gets swept under the carpet again.

What's the message?

Simple words. He's said them in various ways; I hear them now like a bell: Don't lie to God.

There's a flaw in his logic, I realize, a huge, gaping hole in his argument: the people he's murdered had already confessed their sins. They'd done what he said they should, they'd knelt down in the confessional and they'd struggled with the words until they found the courage to say them.

Maybe he doesn't consider that his victims were flawed. Perhaps they weren't examples of what not to do, but examples of what should be done. Maybe the fact that they'd already confessed and were thus guaranteed a place in heaven let him kill without guilt, provided him with the system of rationalization he needed to violate that commandment we all seem to agree on: thou shalt not kill. Or maybe, I think, this is where the rubber leaves the road with him. Maybe this is where he stops making sense and starts making crazy. He's built himself a church of ideas, but it was built on murder, with the bones of his victims.

Maybe, I think, for all his speeches about truth, he's the one lying the most.

I smile at this idea. I like the idea of him failing himself and his principles. I like it a lot.

You're no different. I look at all these names, and that's what I really see. Just like all the monsters; you're not talking to God, you're not talking to me, in the end, you're talking to someone you used to know, and however much you scream, they'll probably never listen.

IT'S TEN O'CLOCK. EVERYONE IS back at Death Central, listening as James briefs us on the results of the phone calls.

"We were able to confirm specific churches for approximately ninety percent of victims killed within the last five years. Beyond five years the percentages go down because the priest running the church has changed."

I hadn't thought of this, but it makes sense. The Catholic Church has personnel turnover like anyone else.

"It's worth noting that of those we were able to confirm, the priest involved generally remembered them without much prompting. They were almost invariably hard-luck cases who made good. Some exceptions, of course, but true in most instances."

"It'd fit with his manifesto," I say. "Those who came clean reversed the course of their lives."

"He chose the churches well. The ones he went after, with few exceptions, were similar to the Redeemer here. Churches run by priests who tried to help those having the most troubles."

"The most likely to have bad shit in their past," Alan points out.

"Also least likely to be missed."

"Now for the bad news. None of the priests we talked to-not one-remembers anyone strange hanging around at the times our victims disappeared."

"Nothing at all?" I ask.

"No. We were very specific with our questions. 'Do you remember a man who would have left around the same time that particular victim disappeared?' for example. Not one answer in the affirmative."

I'm dumbfounded. It wouldn't have surprised me to find most saw nothing. He'd have been careful, people aren't that observant-

but no one remembers anything at all? That's very strange.

"What about cleaning people?"

"We asked, of course. Most of these churches are too poor to pay for someone to come in and clean. They do the work themselves."

I shake my head. "Let's break it down. He'd need access and he'd have to fit in. Especially in these environments. These churches would be small, the parishioners tight-knit. It'd be difficult for a stranger to come in and not stick out."

"He could have pretended to be a parishioner," Callie says. "A down-and-outer like the others."

"Then why wouldn't these priests remember that? He wouldn't have stuck around, he'd have left once he had his victims. Plus, based on Father Yates, I think we're dealing with priests used to keeping their eyes open. They know they're not preaching to a congregation of innocent little lambs."

"Frustrating," Jezabel observes.

James's cell phone rings.

"Yes? What? Okay. Thank you." He snaps his phone shut. "That was computer crimes. We have a new attempt by the Preacher to post a clip on user-tube. They intercepted it and are e-mailing it to me now. They said it's different."

"Different how?" I ask.

"There's no victim in this one. But he's letting us know there will be another one soon."

"I SEE THAT THOSE IN law enforcement continue to work diligently to remove my video clips from the website I chose to share them on. That's understandable and certainly not unexpected. It doesn't matter all that much now anyway; the clips I posted have already found their way to hard drives around the world. They're being shared via newsgroups, e-mail, and other viral video websites. It's the nature of the Internet, and the reason I chose it as my first medium.

"From this point, I acknowledge, it gets a little more difficult. Law enforcement will likely be preventing my message from getting out at all. Again, not unexpected. For that reason, this particular clip is directed to you, to whoever it may be that is hunting me. I've given you everything you need to find me. If you do not, then sometime in the next forty-eight hours, I'll kill again." He pauses. His thumb stops moving on the rosary beads. "I'll say it again: I have given you everything you need to find me. You should know by now: I never lie, and I will keep my promise. Find me."

The clip ends.

"Why does he want to be caught?" Callie asks.

"It's the next step," I say. "You think he's got an audience now?

Wait till he's in prison. He'll be a bonafide celebrity. Soapboxing away till they put a needle in his arm."

"Which will make him a martyr. Something I doubt he'll mind,"

James points out.

"Back to the drawing board," I say, pacing again. "He told us we can find him with the information we have. He says he never lies. I doubt that as a generality, but in this case, I'm buying it because he wants to be captured. We're missing something. What is it?"

Alan sighs. "I was never any good at logic problems. Give me a list of suspects to interview and I'm happy to beat my feet all day long. This is your territory, Smoky. You and James."

"It will be something simple," James says, studying the everpresent list of names on the dry-erase board. "We'll be missing it because it's obvious. Like the confessional as the source of his knowledge. It was there in front of us, which is why we didn't see it at first; it was a part of the landscape."

"Too apparent," Jezebel says.

"Exactly. Hide it in plain sight, just a little disguised. It belongs where it is while we're looking for something trying to be secret."

I remember my original words to AD Jones about the Preacher. I'd said he would have used a disguise on the plane, something simple with perhaps a single striking feature.

Something shutter clicks inside me.

I've tried to describe this phenomenon to others, the thing that always seems to herald a sudden realization on my part. It's like losing time, as though some part of my consciousness grays out, for just a millisecond. I'm left wondering what happened in that millisecond. What did I miss? The answer is simple: the thing I needed to see came into view, but I was not yet ready to understand it. I regain that lost time when I do.

That's what just happened, and I'm left to wonder: What is it that I need to understand? What's that thing that wants to be seen?

"Talk to me, James," I murmur. "List out the component parts of the problem one by one."

He doesn't ask me why; we've been down this road before.

"He chooses his victims based on their confessions. He's able to do this because he's been bugging confessionals in churches that cater to the more troubled sections of society. The congregations of these churches tend to be tight-knit communities."

"Stop there. Why do they tend to be so tight-knit?"

"Common experiences."

"Simpler than that," I say. "All they have in common is each other. No one else accepts them as they are, faults and all."

"Fair enough-which leads us back down the same road: people are watched closely when they come into a group like that, and noticed when they leave. No one remembers a guy leaving around the same time as the victim's disappearance."

Plain sight, plain sight, plain sight. .

The words roll through me like waves that never crest. It's maddening. I try to be the moon, pulling them toward me with my gravity. They come close, but vanish before they ever hit the shore.

"Go on," I say.

"He needed access, so he had to be there. But no one remembers him being there."

I bolt upright.

The waves hit the shore.

Plain sight. .

"Because he wasn't there, " I say, excited. "He understood the mechanics of a group like the ones he needed to infiltrate."

The intimacy created when you admit that you're a fuckup and the people you admit it to accept you anyway, because hey-they're fuckups too.

"Someone working with him, you mean," James says. "How is that any different? They'd still be missed if they left when the victims did."

"That's exactly right. But they didn't disappear when the victims did. They waited for a while, maybe a few weeks, maybe even a month, and then they slipped away. They'd never need an alibi because they were right there with the rest of the congregation while the victim was being kidnapped and killed."

James frowns. "A lot of supposition."

"Logical supposition, though, don't you think?"

"It makes sense," he allows. "We need to make the same calls again, but this time we need to broaden our questions. Ask about men that left not long after the victims went missing, but not immediately."

"And who had been close to the victims," I add. "It'd be a part of it for them. Gathering intel, getting familiar with the victim's life."

"You know," Alan says, "it'd make the most sense for them to be linear in their actions."

"I don't follow," I say.

"Their victim pool is going to be filled with people who tend to be transient or unstable. They'd need to plant the bug, find the victim, and make their move. They couldn't afford to leave and come back, they'd run the risk that their chosen victim had moved on. They'd need to stay focused and remain on-site until the deed was done."

"So?"

"So there should be a lot of time between murders, right? Pick a vic, grab her, film her, kill her, move on to the new locale. That's a lot of logistics. But we have three dead in less than two weeks. Lisa Reid, Rosemary Sonnenfeld, and Valerie Cavanaugh. Seems to me it's possible he would have had to pitch in directly on at least one of those in terms of gathering intel, don't you think?"

"It's a good point," Callie says, "but which one?"

"Lisa Reid." James says it as I think it. "Has to be. She's the one departure, the only victim who wasn't born a woman. She's also the one he used to get our attention."

I feel the excitement rising in me again. The waves are rolling, moving, cresting, and they all threaten to reach the shore together.

"We need to focus on those two, right now-Lisa and Rosemary. How did he choose Lisa, anyway? How'd she come on his radar? She wasn't in his usual stomping grounds, he went after her, she didn't come to him. So how'd he even know about her? Rosemary is one of our most recent victims and we have an in with Yates. He'll remember something, someone close to her who-"

I stop talking as a big wave, a huge wave, comes crashing into shore, roaring for what seems like forever.

Hiding right in plain sight. .

"He told me early on," I whisper.

"What is it?" Callie asks.

"Yates. We asked to talk to Rosemary's known associates. She only had one. Andrea." I swallow. I look at Alan. "Call Yates. Find out Andrea's last name and check into her background. I have a feeling we'll find it's bogus and that she's long, long gone."

36

"LISA REID WAS A BIT OF AN INTERNAL SCANDAL FOR THE church," Cardinal Ross tells me. "The priest running that particular church is a younger man, Father Strain. He's part of a small but growing group of priests who are young, smart, and willing to disagree-

albeit respectfully-with Rome on certain issues."

"I assume taking confession from a transsexual would fit the bill?"

"Yes and no."

I frown. "Sounds complicated."

"The church's stand on homosexuality remains as it has been. Homosexuality is regarded as a sin. Transgendered individuals are considered to be effeminate, i.e., homosexuals who have used the benefits of modern technology to change their outward appearance to match their inner desires. The fact of that change is not considered by the church to remove the truth that they were born as God created them."

"So a transgendered person is basically considered to be a homosexual."

"Yes."

"You said 'effeminate.' What about women changing to men?"

"Both are held to the same standard. Homosexuality is a sin."

"So what does a homosexual who wants to be a Roman Catholic do?"

"They can receive confession, and are urged to do so, until such time as they change their ways and become as God created them and the Bible demands. If they're unable to become completely 'straight'-

to marry a member of the opposite sex, for example-then they are expected to practice chastity. Until either of these things happen, they are not to take part in Holy Communion or various other sacraments."

"Then. . I don't understand. Where's the conflict with Strain?"

"Twofold. Strain was giving Communion to Dexter Reid, for one."

"And the other?"

"Parishioners complained. It can be a different experience depending on where you are, Agent Barrett. A homosexual walking into a church in Los Angeles might expect different treatment than one walking into a church in Texas, for example."

"Ah. I understand."

"Father Strain was cautioned, nothing more. He was told to stop giving Holy Communion to Dexter Reid and to be more circumspect about his dealings with Dexter. He refused."

"What happened to him?"

"Nothing."

There's a quality to that "nothing" that makes me think there are two words missing from it: for now.

"What will happen to him?"

"That's in God's hands."

I chuckle and shake my head. It's comforting, in a way, to see that a bureaucracy is a bureaucracy the world around. Something tells me that Father Strain can expect no further advancement. Maybe he doesn't care.

"Cardinal, I'm looking for a connection. How would Lisa Reid have attracted the Preacher's attention? Was it newsworthy?"

"It didn't appear in any major news outlet that I'm aware of. There were some mentions of it on Catholic blogs and in some newsletters. There is debate even within the church, at times, on homosexuality and how best to bring homosexuals into God's grace. A heated topic, as I'm sure you can imagine."

"That could be it," I murmur. "Maybe he was monitoring religious blogs."

"Agent Barrett, do you think Father Strain is in any danger? This man, would he go after the Father for allowing Dexter into the congregation?"

I notice that we continue the debate he mentioned in the here and now; I say Lisa, he says Dexter. Tomato tomahto, except that we're talking about a person. It seems like such a casual dismissal on his part of everything Lisa was trying to do and be and feel about herself.

"I don't think so. Lisa was a tool for him, a way to draw our attention to what he was doing. He wanted to come out of anonymity with a splash. Lisa fit the bill in spades; her family's political connections, her controversy. Virginia was way out of his normal stomping grounds. I think he did what he intended to do, and then left. I do need to speak with Father Strain, though."

"I understand."

Alan pokes his head into my office. "Got something," he says. He seems excited.

"Cardinal, I have to go. I appreciate your help."

"I'm available when you need me, Agent Barrett."

I bet you are, I think as I hang up. Don't need more scandals now, do you?

The discourse on homosexuality and his refusal to use the name of Lisa has stirred up some of my old angers with the Catholic Church. There was a time I loved the purity of prayer. Just me and God. It was simple, and there was a kind of peaceful truth to that. I never understood or enjoyed what I perceived as the intolerance, the unwillingness to think beyond, to look beyond. Not much seems to have changed.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Andrea told Father Yates her name was Andrea True."

"True? Are you kidding?"

"I know, big funny on their part, ha ha ha. You were right. It was a false name. No Andrea True ever worked for any police department in Ohio. No Andrea True in AFIS, CODIS, etc., etc."

"Perhaps she's just a transient who gave a fake name," Callie observes.

"That'd be some coincidence," Alan says. The tone of his voice is more than doubtful.

I shake my head. "No way. She's a part of it."

Here we go, I think. Here comes the downhill side. Everything picks up speed now.

"Callie, you're coming with me to the Redeemer. Bring your forensics kit. Alan, get on the phone with Father Strain in Virginia. Grill him again on anyone he might have seen associating with or interested in Lisa Reid. Go in the other direction this time-look for the last person he would have suspected of anything."

"Got it."

FATHER YATES STILL LOOKS TROUBLED. I feel bad that I'm about to make things worse for him.

"Andrea True is a false name, Father," I tell him.

"That's not so unusual here."

"There's no Andrea True that ever worked for any police department in Ohio."

He runs his hands through his hair. His eyes find Jesus again. How many times a day does he look to that paint-chipped savior for comfort?

"You think she was working with the Preacher, don't you?"

"I do."

I explain to him how I came to this conclusion. He begins to sag, and it only gets worse as I lay out the probable MO: infiltrating the congregation, bugging the confessional, picking a victim and getting close to her, passing the victim off to her partner, sticking around for a while after the victim disappeared to throw off suspicion. He doesn't want it to be the truth, but Father Yates has worked too close to the hard parts of this society for too long to ignore evidence of evil when it's presented to him.

"Everything you say makes sense, God help me. Andrea moved the day after you spoke to her. She said that it was time for her to go home and restart her life again." His voice is bitter. "I trusted her. I took her in, I gave her Communion and confession. I held her when she told me about her dead son and she wept for him."

Callie has been silent throughout until now.

"Sometimes they're wonderful actors," she says. "It's not that you were blind or stupid, it's that they can give Oscar-worthy performances when they need to."

He gives her a halfhearted smile of agreement but he doesn't seem to take much true comfort from her words.

"How can I help?"

"I think Andrea left something behind for us on purpose. This is coming to an endgame for them. They want us to catch them, but they want us to have to work for it. He said everything we needed to find them was there."

"Is there anything in here that Andrea was in regular contact with?" Callie asks. "Anything she touched a lot, anything she paid an undue amount of attention to?"

His eyes widen.

"What is it, Father?" I ask.

"The chalice. She asked to be given the job of cleaning it. She said that she loved touching the chalice, that it made her feel closer to God."

"That was probably true," I say.

"Can we see it?" Callie asks.

"Of course. Wait here, please."

He leaves and comes back in a moment carrying a blue drawstring bag. He motions for us to come forward to the altar.

"Put it down, please, Father," Callie asks.

He does.

We both watch as Callie puts on a pair of gloves. She doesn't reach into the bag to remove the chalice, but instead opens the top of the bag and then pulls it down toward the base. The chalice is gold and it gleams even in the poor night light of the church. Callie takes out a fluorescent flashlight and proceeds to examine the outer surface.

"Nothing on the exterior at all," she says. "Not even any smudges."

Disappointment rises, but then an idea occurs to me.

"Check on the bottom, underneath the base. I bet that spot gets missed during cleaning by most. If she wanted to leave us a clue, she'd want to make sure that it couldn't get wiped away by accident."

Callie upends the chalice and applies the light. She looks at me and smiles.

"Bingo. Nice big thumbprint, clear as day."

That electric feeling, all over again. It's not the endgame, but we're on our way there.

Callie makes the print visible with fingerprint dust and raises it with clear celo-tape. She attaches the tape to a white card. She takes digital pictures of the print as well, so we have a backup in case something happens to the print card. The camera flashes seem alien here, man-made lightning strikes. Jesus and the altar appear in a moment of daylight before returning to the shadows caused by the candle flames. The chalice lights up like it's been set on fire.

I stare at it and wonder, when exactly did this happen? How did I arrive here? When I was a girl, I sipped from the lip of a similar cup and it meant that I was close to God. Now it means I am close to a monster.

Is it a choice? I ask myself. The monsters or God? Is it possible to get so near them, to understand them as well as I do, and still have room for a concept of the divine?

The flash fires and I wince against its painful brilliance, a light that has nothing to do with God, nothing at all.

"That's all I need for now," Callie says.

I turn to Father Yates. "We need to take the chalice, Father."

He grimaces. "Feel free. It's not fit for use anymore, as far as I'm concerned."

"Her thumbprint erases God's presence? Seems like a lot of power you're granting her."

He finds that smile, the one he's been giving me all along as I've challenged him with my own disbelief and bitterness. One-part tolerance, two-parts compassion, and kindness, through and through.

"No, it's not that. I simply won't allow any part of them to coexist with that holy moment. They don't deserve it."

I realize that I've been projecting. Father Yates has been troubled by recent events, true, but his faith has never been shaken. Uncertainty about God is my bailiwick; he's always remained loyal.

"What are you going to pray for now, Father?"

"Justice, of course."

My mouth twists as some more of that dark bitterness rises inside me. It seems like there's no end to it.

"My kind of justice, or God's?"

"I don't have to pray for His justice. His justice is certain. So I guess I'll pray for yours."

"WE'RE CLOSE NOW," CALLIE SAYS as we drive back. "We'll know who they are soon."

"Yes."

"Must be nice, to have the kind of faith that man has."

"I suppose. I take it you don't?"

She laughs and pops a Vicodin she'd had waiting in her hand.

"I believe in me and a select few and that's hard enough as it is."

A-fucking-men, I think.

"What about you?" she asks.

"Ask me after we catch him. I will tell you one thing, if you can keep your big mouth shut."

"The unkindest cut." She sighs. "But tell me."

"Tommy and I are going to move in together. In the middle of all this, that's one thing I was able to figure out, and I'll admit, Father Yates played a part."

She's quiet.

"I'm so happy for you, Smoky."

Her voice is thick with relief, a release of tension that puzzles me until I study her and understand.

"You worried about me too much, Callie. I was always going to be fine."

"That's-" She swallows, shakes it off, flashes me one of those mega-watt smiles. "That's one of the many things good friends do."

I reach out to touch her, but pull my hand back. Intimacy with Callie is a dance all its own.

"Let's go catch a killer, friend."

That we can share. No problem at all.

37

"FATHER STRAIN WAS PRETTY SHARP," ALAN SAYS. "WHEN I explained what I was looking for and why, he remembered something right away. A cripple. Guy in a wheelchair came in, had been a drunk and stumbled out into traffic one day, ended up paralyzed from the waist down. He hit it off with Lisa Reid."

"Clever. Why didn't his name come up if he left when Lisa was murdered?"

"He was smart. Made up some story about a daughter he was reconciling with. He was scheduled to fly to California to meet her a few days before Lisa's trip. I'm guessing he'd already killed Ambrose before he left the church. He probably hung out at Ambrose's until Lisa left and then followed her to and from Texas."

It all makes sense and it reinforces our image of him; intelligent, decisive, organized. In all the prior murders, he sent "Andrea" in to locate the victim. She was their public face. With Lisa he could come out into the light. It must have been very satisfying.

"Alan, I need you to switch places with Callie and run the print we got from the Redeemer through AFIS. Callie, I need you to get on the phone with forensics in Virginia. I need them to go to Strain's church and see if there's a print there too."

"Do you think it'll be on the chalice?"

"It's the first place I'd look."

He couldn't have resisted. No more hiding, right? He probably grinned without knowing it as he left his mark for us to find.

"HERE WE GO," ALAN CALLS out.

I hurry over to his desk. On the screen of his computer is a photograph of Andrea True. She's younger in this picture, her hair is shorter, but there's no denying that it's her.

"Frances Murphy," I read. "Why is she in the database?"

"Past criminal record." He scrolls down. "Get this: arrested for assaulting a Catholic priest. That particular priest was later arrested for child molestation and, let's see. . no dispensation from the judge because she wasn't one of those the priest had molested. He liked boys."

"Known associates?"

He taps a key and three words appear that take my breath away.

"Brother, Michael Murphy," I read aloud. "Look him up."

Michael Murphy's photograph appears on the screen. He's a male version of his sister, with the same big, sad eyes. He's handsome enough, not a pretty boy. He has a strong face and a certain intensity; he'd have had no problems with the ladies.

"He took part in the assault on the priest," Alan notes. "Twenty years ago. No dispensation. He wasn't one of the molested either."

"What else?"

A few more taps and their rap sheets appear.

"A familiar pattern," Alan observes.

The list of offenses starts at the age of eighteen and continues forward for about four or five years. Petty thefts, larceny, check-kiting-

nothing huge. The convictions taper off at about twenty-two for both of them. There's nothing after that other than the assault on the priest.

"Check out the birthdates," Alan says.

"January twenty-second and. . January twenty-second?" I blink.

"They're twins."

"Think they'll look good in matching jumpsuits?"

Kirby's voice startles me. She'd crept up behind us. I'd been so engrossed that I hadn't noticed her coming in.

"Twins acting as a killing team?" I mutter. "How does that work?"

"He'll be the one in charge," Kirby says. "Look at her. She's weak around the eyes." Her voice is filled with contempt. "I ran into a brother/sister killing team once down in-well, somewhere else. Killing just seemed to run in the family. Even the dad was a good hitter. Kind of cute too."

I glance at her. She grins.

"I can take a hint. I'll talk to Callie later. Have fun with Dick and Jane."

I murmur something in reply as she leaves.

Weak, huh? I consider her act as Andrea, her commitment to that persona, and have to disagree with Kirby's assessment. I wonder, were the scars on her arm fake? Or had she cut herself sometime in the past, so that she could play the part of a failed suicide to perfection?

The probable answer is as disturbing as everything else about these two.

"Let's find them, Alan."

Coming up on the end of you, Preacher. You and your sister may have shared everything, but you'll die apart. I'll make sure of that.

"GOT A PRINT SCANNED IN and on its way to me via e-mail," Callie says. "Give me a sec to match it up with our Mr. Murphy and we'll have all the confirmation we need."

"Alan, where are we on possible current locations for these two?"

"Still working on it."

The door to the office swings open and James walks in with Jezebel. Both have grim expressions on their faces.

"We have a new message from the Preacher. I only watched the beginning of it, but he's showing his face and congratulating us on figuring out who he is."

"Shit," Alan and I say in unison, looking at each other.

"He had eyes on the Redeemer somehow," I say. "He knew there's only one reason we'd show up there, and he knows they left the thumbprint there."

"Think he'll run?" Alan asks.

"I don't know. I think he wants to be caught, but now that it's come down to it. ." I shrug. "They could be having a change of heart. Let's see the clip, James."

He sits down and we all crowd around the monitor to watch, with the exception of Callie.

There's no lettering at the beginning of this clip, no fancy editing. He's communicating to us in as close to real time as this medium allows. The other difference is that we can now see his face. I examine him and see that Michael Murphy is a man at peace. He's certain. He is doing what he was meant to do and doesn't go to bed at night worrying about whether he's on the side of right or wrong. He's calm, composed, happy. His voice is almost friendly.

"It's come to my attention that those in law enforcement responsible for tracking me down have finally found out who I am. I can't tell you how happy this makes me. My sister and I have been building to this moment for twenty years. Twenty years of hiding, twenty years of planning, twenty years of sacrifice.

"Many will ask: why? If you had something to say, why not just say it? I think the answer to that question is self-evident. Look around you at society today. We live in a world where, more and more, the idea of the soul is scoffed at if it's even thought of at all. Mankind revels in the flesh, and the flesh, I am afraid, only believes what it can see.

"Talk to the flesh of truth and it will sniff and say: 'Truth? What truth? I don't see truth. I see sex. I see drugs. I see sensation.'

"I knew if we were going to prove our point and bring people back to God, that we would have to show them. They would have to see with the eyes, hear with the ears. Only then would they be able to know with the heart.

"And it's working, praise God. The impact of the opus is already being felt. Discussions have opened around the world." He picks up a paper from the table and reads. " 'The Preacher has opened my eyes again to the idea that I could get rid of that space I put between me and God, the space made up of the lies I've been unwilling to let go of. I listened to what he had to say and I walked to my local church and gave my first confession in ten years.' "

"Disgusting," Callie says, curling her lip in scorn. "Did you also confess to agreeing with a murderer?"

Discomfort wiggles inside me. I too had been driven to the confessional by the Preacher. I'll make up for it by catching him.

"That is one of many. Not all agree with me, of course, but the point is-they are talking about it. They are discussing the subject of truth, lie, sin, God, confession, and salvation. The flame has been lit again, praise God. Attempts to block my message are a hopeless activity in today's world. Copies of this and all of my other videos have been put on CD and are being mailed worldwide to media outlets, authors, religious scholars, and skeptics. The message can be slowed; it can't be stopped."

"He's right about that," James says.

"I feel certain that my sister and I will be captured soon."

"He's right about that too," I growl.

"We welcome this. It's the next step on the path we've chosen. It is time that we preach in person, that we be available for discussions, questions, and interviews. Before that happens, I thought it was important to show that we are able to practice what we preach. Come here, Frances."

Frances, who I met as Andrea, steps into the camera lens. She too looks peaceful. Almost radiant. They are more attractive together than apart, light and mirrors reflecting back at each other. She smiles down at her brother, and turns to the camera. He continues speaking.

"Frances and I were born as twins. We were born healthy and have lived healthy, which, as you will come to understand, was God's first gift to us. It could have been much, much different. We lived a difficult life, and it was not without sin or lies. We strayed from God's path on more than one occasion. It's time for us to do what we asked others to do: it's time for our confession."

"This I want to hear," Alan murmurs.

"Our father," he says, "was a Catholic priest."

THE SINS of MICHAEL and FRANCES MURPHY 38

MICHAEL CROUCHED DOWN BEHIND THE CURTAIN AND CARE- fully, oh so carefully, put his ear to the wall of the confessional booth. Mrs. Stevens was in there, she of the blonde hair and the large bosoms. Mrs. Stevens specialized in sins of lust, which made for exciting listening indeed.

He closed his eyes and opened his mouth a little. It took a moment, but the voices began to filter through the wood.

"I can't seem to stop touching myself, Father."

A pause. Michael could imagine the priest covering a sigh.

"And where do you touch yourself, my child?"

A sharp breath, indrawn.

She likes this question, Michael thinks.

"Between my legs, Father. Under the panties, and inside the lips of my pussy."

Michael's mouth dropped open farther. What kind of harlot uses the word pussy in a confessional?

He chastised himself for his own hypocrisy. Hypocrisy was a form of pride, and pride was a sin. The truth was, the whole thing had given him a raging hard-on. The idea of Mrs. Stevens (she of the blonde hair and the large bosoms) touching herself there-heck, the idea of her in panties-was an image that boggled the mind's eye. The downside to this, of course, was that he'd have to come clean in confession. He'd have to admit-again-to hiding behind the curtain against the wall, to putting his ear up against the confessional booth, to listening to that most private of moments. In this case, he could add his own lustful thoughts to the quality of the sin. It made it more difficult that the priest he'd be confessing this to was his own father. Not Father Confessor, but Father Dad. No way around it, though. Confession was a must, and Michael would never allow himself to withhold a confession, whatever the price. Failure to confess was a one-way ticket to an eternity in hellfire. Michael believed in hell. No secret was worth that. One of the many things Michael admired about Dad was that he kept the separation between his job as a priest and his job as a father absolute. There was never a hint to Michael in real life that his dad had any personal opinion about what Michael had revealed in confession. As Michael listened to Mrs. Stevens getting more graphic about her sin of masturbation (wet, wet, she whispered, so very, very wet), he experienced a moment of admiration and love for his father. Dad was the best man Michael knew, the most decent, the most honorable. It was a question of character, and Frank Murphy had it in spades. He needed no priest's collar to prove it either.

Dad was the reason Michael wanted to become a priest. Dad was the reason he'd decided to enter the priesthood as a virgin. If he was honest with himself (and Michael prized honesty above all other things), that pledge was what he used to rationalize this moment. He was never going to know the touch of a woman, so was it really so bad to take a gander into the world of Mrs. Stevens and her wet white panties? Just a tiny, dirty peek?

Not so bad, no, he thought, but still a sin. Still to be confessed. He was amazed at his father's patience sometimes. Mrs. Stevens didn't sound all that sorry to Michael. She sounded pretty excited, as a matter of fact. Even at thirteen, Michael could tell she was using this moment to sin some more, that she was getting off on confessing her masturbation to a handsome and celibate priest. She probably had wet panties right now.

Pubic hair as blonde as the hair on her head, glistening as she gasped. .

This image both repulsed and excited him.

"Who's in there?"

The whisper would have shocked him to his bones if he hadn't sensed her coming. It was nearly impossible for them to sneak up on each other. He wasn't sure why. Maybe it was because they were twins. Michael pulled his ear away from the booth with great care and some reluctance, making sure the wood didn't creak. He turned to his twin and smiled.

"Mrs. Stevens."

She made a face. "That whore? Why do you like listening to her, anyway? Does it make your pee-pee hard?" she teased.

"No," Michael whispered in protest. "Of course not."

Frances just smiled back. It was a knowing smile. Michael reflected that lying was the other thing they couldn't do with each other.

He sighed and shrugged.

"I'll go to confession."

"Good."

That would be the end of it, he knew. The final thing they shared, the thing in his life he was most certain of, other than his faith, was that his twin would always love him, no matter what.

"Let's move away from here," he whispers.

They pad away from the confessional booth like master thieves. They head back to the living quarters, and their shared room. It was a small room. Some might even call it bleak, but it was home to them. The room was separated by a curtain hung from the ceiling that they could draw shut when they needed to. Father had put it up when Frances had begun to develop breasts.

"This is a wall," he'd said. "A wall with no door. When you draw it closed, only the person who drew it can open it again. You understand?"

"Yes, Father," they'd agreed, not really understanding the need for it at the time.

They understood better now. Michael masturbated at night, sometimes, after Frances had fallen asleep. He'd fight the urge, but it could become overwhelming. In a hidden place, inside a dark grotto that he wasn't quite ready to peer into yet, it was somehow more exciting to do it while thinking of his sister there, an arm's length away and yet untouchable. He tried to be silent, but knew, sometimes, he gasped louder than he should. Had she heard him in those moments?

He thought maybe. Yes. Maybe she had.

He'd heard her too. Late at night, when she must have thought he was sleeping, he'd heard her little sighs and muffled moans, and had realized that she was touching herself. It shocked him at first, then intrigued him, then brought forth something he decided not to look at. He'd never touch his sister, not in a million years, but he admitted something to her once.

"I'll never have sex," he told her. "But. . if I was going to, it would be with a woman just like you, Frances."

"I know," she'd said and smiled. "I feel the same way."

Some might call it twisted; they called it love, and were careful not to look too deep. Besides, nothing ever happened. Frances was going to become a nun. It was their plan. The fact that it would separate them was difficult, very difficult, but wasn't suffering one of the things that God demanded of the faithful?

There was a reason for everything, they both believed that. Father had a twin sister as well. Father had not gone to the seminary a virgin. He'd lain with a woman, and had gotten her pregnant. She'd died in childbirth. It was difficult, but, as in all things, Father was up to the task God had placed before him. He had raised them and had convinced the church to allow him into the seminary. His twin, Aunt Michelle, had cared for them while he was in the seminary. When father returned as an ordained priest, he took them back, and Aunt Michelle joined a convent and became a nun.

It was an unusual life, they knew that, but Father was a good father. He was kind, he was wise, he was hard but fair. He raised them to love God above all things, but he also demanded that they test their faith with intellect, putting them into public, not private schools, and exposing them to the sinful world outside the walls of the church.

"There are far more people in this world who do not believe in God than do," he'd told them. "If you want to spread the word of God to the faithless, you have to understand them. Understanding breeds compassion, compassion breeds love, and love is the best way to bring Christ into a sinner's heart."

Michael and Frances did as he said, and entered that world together. They viewed it like two soldiers who'd been sent on a mission. They hung out together, socialized little but were not unfriendly. They were both so attractive that other oddities were forgiven. Michael's refusals of advances drove the girls crazy, while Frances's refusals convinced the boys that she was the most desirable creature on earth.

They had no real friends at school, only acquaintances, and that was fine with them. They were content in the path they saw before them and had no doubts about their future.

Father and Aunt Michelle were twins, and had become a priest and a nun. Frances and Michael were twins, and shared the same destiny. What else could this be but a sign from God?

They sat down on their beds to do their homework. Michael was uncomfortably aware that he still had an erection. The image of Mrs. Stevens was a vivid one. He glanced over at his twin and was shocked to see that she was looking at him.

She knows. She always knows.

It excited him, it disgusted him, it filled him with guilt and something far darker. The expression on her face was one of speculation. She smiled and reached for the curtain. Before she drew it between them, she said:

"Be sure to go to confession tomorrow."

He swallowed and nodded.

"I will."

"I love you, Michael."

"I love you too."

She drew the curtain closed.

MICHAEL AND FRANCES WERE SIXTEEN when everything changed. There was no evidence that their world was about to come crashing down around them. The world-and God-were strange and cruel like that. This was something Michael had always known and accepted, until it happened to him. They were asleep when the sound of voices woke Michael up. He glanced over and saw that Frances was still sleeping. Years later, he'd wonder why he'd been awoken. He'd come to understand that God had called him from sleep, because God had a plan. The voices weren't loud, but they had a sense of urgency to them. The fact of them was strange; it was 2:00 A.M. Father went to bed at 9:30 and woke up at 4:30.

Michael stood up and went to the door. He put his ear to it as he had done so many times to the wall of the confessional booth. He closed his eyes, and he listened.

One of the voices was female, and strangely familiar, though he couldn't quite place it. The other belonged to his father.

"They don't need to know!" his father whispered. "There's no reason. This was our sin, our secret. They're fine, they're healthy, and they both plan to lead holy lives, devoted to God. Why burden them with this now?"

"God spoke to me, Frank. I've spent the last sixteen years praying to him, asking him for forgiveness. I have calluses on my knees from praying. He finally answered. Do you know what he said? He said just one word: truth. I heard it in my heart, clear as a bell. God is love, Frank, remember? Love can only come from truth. I agreed to hide this in the beginning because I was ashamed. I was certain God would never forgive me. But he spoke to me, he told me he will forgive me. All I have to do is obey him, to tell the truth."

"You're hearing things! Do you really think that God would want you to ruin their lives by telling them the truth, by telling them you are their mother?"

Michael's head shot away from the door like he'd had his ear pressed against a hot iron.

What had he said?

Mother. The word was mother.

How many times, in early years, had they pressed Father, had they asked him about their mother?

She died in childbirth, he'd told them. She's with God now, she's the reason I joined the priesthood. Let her be.

One day they stopped asking, but they never stopped wondering. And why did her voice sound familiar?

"What is it?"

He started in the dark. His twin stood behind him. He realized he was shivering.

"Michael?"

She put her arms around his waist and hugged herself to him, cheek against his shoulder blades. He continued to shiver, but even in his fear he was aware of her small breasts against his back. He chastised himself in silence. Lust is the devil's work, and the devil is tireless.

"F-father is arguing with someone. A woman. I heard him say she's our mother."

He felt her stiffen against him.

"What?"

He wanted to turn around. He wanted to turn around and tell her to forget it, they should go back to bed and wake up the next morning and realize that it had all been a dream. He couldn't turn around right now, though. She'd see his lust.

The devil is tireless. .

"I heard him. Listen."

She continued to clutch him as they strained to hear. He marveled at the dexterity of Satan. Michael was terrified of what they might hear, angered at what they'd already heard, he was a little bit dizzy, he was trying to hear more but didn't want to hear more, and through it all, he was never unaware of those small breasts against his back, the hint of what might (just might) be her nipples. Lucifer could walk and chew gum at the same time, no doubt about that.

"I forbid it!" Michael's father raged in a whisper. Silence.

The woman's voice was calm, sure, certain. He still couldn't quite place it; the whisper was disguising it.

"You can't forbid me to do what God's ordered, Frank. I am their mother, and God has said it's time they knew everything."

Michael knew something was very wrong when Frances gasped. She buried her face in his back and moaned. It was a sound of horror. Her arms left him and he felt her back away. He turned around and saw that her face was milk-white, her eyes so wide he thought they'd pop out of their sockets, her fist stuffed in her mouth to stifle her moans. She pointed a shaking finger at the door, but couldn't seem to say anything coherent.

"Frances? What is it?"

She pulled the fist from her mouth. He was shocked to see that she'd bitten it hard enough to draw blood in places.

"Her. ." she whispered, still horrified. "Don't you recognize her voice?" She began to pull her hair. Some of it ripped away from her scalp. "Don't you recognize her voice?"

Michael grabbed her wrists to keep her from hurting herself more. He'd always loved her hair. Other than her eyes, it was the thing that made her the most beautiful.

"Frances! Get hold of yourself!"

She yanked her wrists out of his grasp and sat down against the wall. She pulled her knees up to her chest and put her forehead against them. She began to rock, back and forth.

"Go and see. You'll understand."

He could barely hear her.

But something was starting to swim up from a very deep, very dark place. Something that caused a greasy sweat to break out on his forehead.

He took a last look at his twin and opened the door. He padded down the hall toward the voices, which were coming from the chapel. The sweat was really coming now and he started to run, because that dark thing was swimming with a vengeance, and he wanted to get there before it broke the surface, so he could prove it wrong, wrong, wrong. .

He burst into the chapel barefoot, in his underwear, covered with sweat and shivering like a naked man in a snowstorm. The thing burst through the surface. Laughing.

Do you see? it asks. Do you seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee hee hee hee hee?

He did see. He saw his father, the great and honorable Frank Murphy, standing next to the woman who'd said she was their mother.

The woman was a nun, and he knew her well.

Aunt Michelle.

39

"MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER HAD BEEN BROTHER AND SISter, twins like my sister and I. They'd lain together and the result had been us." His face is sad, somber, grave. "They conspired to hide my mother's pregnancy. It wasn't so hard. They were both eighteen. They'd gotten drunk and had let the devil lead them.

"How do I describe what that was like for us? The two people we respected most in the world had spent our lifetime lying to us. Our birthright was incest. We were the result of the forbidden coupling.

"I asked my father, that night, if he'd ever confessed this sin to another. He said that he had not." Murphy's expression is incredulous.

"Can you imagine? He'd kept his sin to himself, had consigned himself to hellfire. Why? To protect us? No. Any priest he'd confessed to would have kept his secret. He did it because he was ashamed.

"Of all the things I learned and heard, that was the one that was unforgivable to me. Not the incest, though that was bad enough. Not the lying to my sister and me, I could even understand that. The one thing I could not forgive him for was his deception of God.

"They told us they'd devoted their lives to God and had raised us to fear God as penance for their sin. I couldn't hear this, couldn't see past that most basic deception.

"My sister and I fled the church that morning. Father tried to stop us, but I struck him down." He smiles, once. "No, I didn't kill him. He died of cancer ten years ago. I have no idea if he ever confessed to his sin. I like to think he did."

"She never talks," Alan says.

"He's in charge," I reply. "It's his show."

This is common in serial killer teams. One acts as the dominant, calls the plays, provides the rationalization for their actions. Kirby hadn't been so far off the mark after all.

"We were troubled for a number of years, I will admit. We lost our way. The only thing we never lost was our love for each other." His sister places a hand on his shoulder. He reaches up to hold it while continuing to speak. "It took us some time to come back to God. I won't bore you with the ins and outs of that right now. There's time for our full story later. All that's important now is that truth: we did come back to God. I came to realize that the ruination of our lives was the result of a lie, a refusal to bare all to God, a refusal to confess in order to receive salvation.

"We have since applied this to ourselves, without mercy or restraint. I admitted to sexual longings for my sister. She did the same. We did our penance for our actions, for so nearly following in our parents' sinful footsteps. And we came, once again, to understand what God's purpose was for us."

He glances up at her, she down at him, and they smile. It's an image made terrible because it is beatific. Monsters with halos and blood on their teeth. They return their gaze to the camera.

"God had tested us, from the moment of our conception. He gave us every reason to give up on Him. He provided us with betrayal, doubt, and suffering. He wanted to be sure we were strong enough. God tests all His prophets thus.

"I came to understand that the face of my father was the face of far too many. The holy man, devoting his life to God and others. The admirable soul who is yet willing to consign himself to eternal damnation because he is willing to reveal some of his secrets, but not all of them. My father admitted to having children out of wedlock, but not to the ultimate truth-that it had been his sister he slept with.

"I came to understand that it was our duty to bring others to the full light of God by ensuring they understood that God accepts only absolutes in His truth. Be truthful about all, be factually contrite, ask Him to forgive, and He will cleanse the sin from you. Admit to nine sins of ten, hold back the one, and you will burn forever.

"We have devoted our lives to this work. It has been difficult. Thou shalt not kill, one of God's most basic dictates. But all those we killed had confessed to their sins, and all save one were truly contrite. How else could we know about them? We only took souls who had admitted their sins to a priest in holy confession. They were martyrs, all but one, pierced in the side as Christ on the cross, and the contrite now sit at the right hand of the Lord." He pauses. "The child is the exception, of course. I have no doubt that she is burning as I speak. She died to illuminate the other half of the sacred agreement: contrition. Because of these deaths, millions more will understand that they are not alone, that we all have shameful things inside us. We all have a darker side we must admit to if we're to experience the fullness of the love of God. And oh, how wonderful that love is. God is many things, but most of all, God is love."

The first visible hint of insanity reveals itself. It's subtle. A certain shine to the eyes, a higher pitch to the voice. But it's there. Behind it will be the truth of what he's doing and done and why. Shame at the circumstances that caused their birth, betrayal by those they trusted, all of it wrapped in the religion in which they were raised. I don't care how flowery the phrases are, how carefully thought out the rationalizations; serial murder is sublimated rage. There are no exceptions. I consider, again, the fact that the victims were all women and realize that Callie had been correct when she spoke about the Madonna and the whore. Michael Murphy blamed his aunt/mother more than he blamed his father, and the women he murdered had paid the price.

"That stage of our work is done. We're ready now, to move forward, to take the next step on the path God has laid for us. Come find us. We are ready. We will go willingly, and will not fight back."

Fade to black.

"Isn't that nice of them?" Callie says, scorn in her voice. "Poor babies, boo-hoo for them. Daddy was an asshole, join the club."

I tend to agree with her sentiments; we all do. Life is rough, even cruel and unjust. That's no excuse for turning on your fellow man. The nature versus nurture argument has raged for years, and will rage for more. I think there is truth in the need for a good environment. Our future is informed by what we experience as children. Statistics bear this out too often to be discounted.

Approximately one-third of the abused go on to become abusers. But what about the other two-thirds? All those abused, mistreated, beaten, and betrayed, who went on to lead normal lives? Haunted forever by their experiences, maybe even permanently damaged, but-

and here's the point-still decent? For every victim of molestation who goes on to offend against children as an adult, we can find examples of victims who went on to become kind and loving parents. What is the difference between the two? Are some of us just born able to carry bigger burdens than others?

Michael and Frances had been dealt a bad hand, true, but it was hardly crippling. Not even close to the worst I'd ever heard. The fact that they'd managed to spin their misfortune into a rationalization for twenty years of murder is, for me, more a testament to their weakness and their guilt than a reason to sympathize.

"I don't really care why," I say. "I just want to put them in jail."

"I can get behind that," Alan agrees.

In the end, this is the simplicity that saves us. Looking for reasons why, trying to get down to that deep, dark bedrock, is just a serpent eating its own tail. In the end, you won't find truth, you'll just devour yourself. At some point we have to stop trying to understand why and accept that our only job is to remove them from society. It's easier with some than others.

"Let's get a current address," I say, "and give them their wish."

AN HOUR HAS PASSED SINCE the discoveries began to come so fast and furious. AD Jones is in our offices, along with my team and the FBI SWAT.

The head of our SWAT is Sam Brady, Callie's fiance. Brady is in his mid-forties and he's a tall, lanky man, standing around six-four, with close-cropped hair and a face that can be as grim as his profession calls for. I've seen other sides to him and have come to know a man at peace with who he is. He loves Callie quietly, but he loves her deeply and he seems to bring this approach to everything in his life. He's solid and all man and utterly unintimidated by Callie. Brady has watched the last video clip of the Preacher.

"I don't recommend going in hot," he says. "I'm not the expert, but it seems to me that they want to be taken into custody. Need it, even."

"I agree," I say, "but I'm not confident enough about it to go knock on the front door. I think we should set up a perimeter and talk them out via phones or bullhorns. If they want to come quietly, we'll let them. If not. ." I shrug. "Tear gas time."

He considers this and nods. "I'll get my team geared up. Give us twenty minutes."

"We'll meet you in the parking lot."

I AM CHECKING MY WEAPON and readying my mind. We all are.

"Hey," Alan says, ratcheting back the slide on his weapon, "if you know the death penalty is on the table and you plead guilty-is that suicide?"

"I think in their case they're confident that it's martyrdom."

He holsters his weapon and sighs. "Yeah. So, do you think they meant it about coming quietly?"

"I think so. But you can never be sure at the end."

Suicide, by self or by cop, is an oft-preferred solution for a criminal when the jig's up. Most accepted from the beginning that they would die if discovered.

"Seems strange they have a house in the Valley," he muses.

"Probably drove by it once or twice and never knew."

James's cell phone rings. He answers, listens, and frowns.

"What's that?" he asks. His face goes white. "Send it to me now."

"What is it?" I ask.

"Bitch," he breathes, but it has an odd sound to it. More desperate than insulting.

"James?"

He looks at me.

"Kirby got there first. Now they've got her."

40

KIRBY APPEARS ON CAMERA, NAKED AND TIED TO A CHAIR. Michael Murphy stands next to her. He's furious.

"I told you we'd surrender peacefully! I didn't expect any of you to agree with our actions, but I did expect you to uphold the law." He takes a deep breath. "I am very, very disappointed."

"Oh, for God's sake, shuuuuuuuut uuuuuuuuup," Kirby says, rolling her eyes.

"Stupid fucking kid," Brady murmurs. "Can never learn to keep her mouth shut." I'd called him back once we knew what we were looking at.

Michael steps in front of her. All we can see is his back and her legs.

"You're in no position to take the Lord's name in vain," he says.

"Bite me, bozo," Kirby replies, "and your God can bite it too. Hard."

I brace myself, expecting him to slap her, but he draws his arm back and hits her in the face with his closed fist. The smack of flesh against flesh cracks through the computer speakers and Kirby goes over backward in her chair.

"Motherfucker," I whisper.

The camera had been stationary. It begins to move now, jiggling a bit with the motion. Frances must have picked it up. It zooms in on Kirby's face. She's lying against a hardwood floor, blonde hair sprayed out around her. Her eyes are having trouble focusing. Her lips have been split open in two places and blood runs freely down her chin and left cheek. She shakes her head to clear it and laughs.

"You hit like a girl."

"Oh, Kirby," Callie says. "Stupid girl. Shut up now."

She won't, I think. This is who she is.

Michael grabs her by her hair and uses it to heft the full weight of her body, to bring her back into a sitting position. Kirby turns her head to the right and spits to clear the blood from her mouth. She turns back to the camera and we all see those cold, awful killer's eyes.

"I'm going to kill you and your sister," she says. "Just wanted you to know that. And no one sent me here. One of the people you murdered was an old friend of mine." She grins. Her teeth are red with her blood. "Thought I'd return the favor."

"Murder is a sin," Michael scolds her. "We killed for God's purpose. If you kill us for vengeance, you'll go to hell."

Really? I think. What about Ambrose, the man you murdered for his identity? God's purpose?

It's a useless question; his answer would be yes, of course. Kirby shrugs. "So sue me. I'm good at it." Another torn-lipped, red-toothed grin. "You'll see."

"You really came here on your own?" Michael asks.

"I'm a solo act, asshole, and I always have been."

"Unfortunate for you," he says, "that you missed the backup security camera. We were waiting for you when you came through the door."

"Yeah, well. Nobody's perfect. You should have killed me, though. Tasers are for pussies."

"Knocked you down fast enough," Frances snarls.

Kirby smiles. "Down, but not dead, dummy. Bad move on your part."

"What's your name?" Michael asks.

"Since we're on a religious bender, why don't you call me. . Eve."

She chuckles. "I always liked her style, you know? Eat that apple. Yummy."

"Very well. Are you Catholic, Eve?"

She rolls her eyes.

"Supreme beings are for suckers. I believe in guns, good beer, masturbation when I don't have a man, and a nice hard cock when I do." She winks. "Know what I mean?"

"Blasphemous bitch," he observes.

"Why, thank you, asshole."

"Why don't you stop calling me that, Eve. My name is Michael."

"Nah. Asshole is just fine."

He sighs. "I can see getting you to confess is going to be a lot of work, Eve."

"Ohhhh, torture? Coolio."

"Why isn't this clip ending?" I ask.

"This isn't a clip," James says. "This is live."

"Sam?" I ask, turning to him. "We need to get over there now. This is your show. What's the game plan with something like this?"

He examines the video feed. "Looks to me like they're in the living room." He grabs the house plans from a desk. "There's only two ways in. Front door and back." He cups his chin, thinking. "Flash-bangs through the front windows, and we breach through the front and back doors. Go in hard, take them down while they're still reeling. Simple is the best way. Get more complicated and you increase the possibility of screwing the pooch." He nods to the computer. "They've been kind enough to provide us with ongoing video surveillance. We'll use it. Bring a laptop with wireless capabilities and execute at the most opportune moment."

Sounds good to me. I glance at AD Jones. "Sir?"

"Do it. Shoot to kill if necessary. And figure out a way to make sure this video never gets seen. The last thing we need on a high profile case like this is association with a killer like Kirby Mitchell."

"I have a high speed connection via a cellular network on my laptop," Callie says. "I just need the URL for this feed."

"I'll provide that," James says.

Brady nods. "I'll meet you in the parking lot."

"Before I'm done," Michael says to Kirby, "you'll experience the wonder of confession to God. You'll learn what it's like to be purged of lies. Truth is a light, Eve, a light like no other."

"Bring it on, asshole. But can you stop hitting me in the face, at least? Girl's got to be able to get a date, you know?"

"Let's get moving," I say. "If she keeps talking like that, she might not have much time."

41

"START SMALL, EVE. THAT'S THE BEST WAY, SOMETIMES. BE- gin with the small things and work up to the most shameful. Do you think you can do that?"

We're all in the same car. Alan is driving, following Brady and his team in their van. I have the laptop.

Kirby smiles.

"Sure. I got one for you."

"Yes?" He sounds pleased, maybe a little surprised that she's agreed so easily.

"The first blow job I ever gave."

Michael nods. "Lust, oral sex. Very good. Go on."

"Well, it was this really cute guy, hunkalicious, you know? I'd heard he had a big old cock, and while I'd seen pictures of them, I'd never seen them in the flesh, so to speak. Turgid, you know?"

"Yes, yes, continue." He doesn't seem to appreciate Kirby's use of the descriptive.

"Anyway, I told him I wanted to see that big ol' hot dog, and hey-

coincidence-he wanted to show it to me." She rolls her eyes. "Guys are funny that way. He had a car, so I snuck out that night and I met him out front and we drove to a parking lot near the beach. I told him to whip that sucker out, pun intended. Turns out someone had added a few inches. I mean, it wasn't small, but I've sucked bigger, you know."

"Get to the point, please."

"It was kind of cute. Wearing its little army helmet, all washed up and shiny and standing at attention. 'Sergeant Cock reporting for duty, ma'am!' " She giggles.

"This slut is wasting your time," Frances says from behind the camera.

"Hey, it's my sin, right? As long as I end up telling the whole truth, it shouldn't matter how I tell it."

Michael nods. "Fair enough, Eve. Go on."

"Okay. So I decided it was time to play turkey-you know: gobble gobble gobble! I opened wide and put the train in the tunnel. That's when he started screaming."

There's a moment of silence. Michael frowns. "Why was he screaming?"

Kirby heaves an exaggerated sigh. "Hey, I was only twelve. He was sixteen, and hot. I was nervous. I was really worried about bad breath, so I gargled with mint freshener for like an hour beforehand. Then I chewed up a bunch of breath mints right before I started. . you know." She clucks her tongue and looks regretful. "Poor guy. Almost blistered his wee-wee. He started screaming and yanked my head off. From experience, things have to be pretty bad for a guy to do that. He jumped out of the car and was running around in circles saying, 'It burns, it burns, it burns!' That, right there, that's the real sin."

"What, exactly?"

"That I gave a bad blow job." She bats her eyes sweetly. "Will the Big Guy forgive me? I never did it again, and I'm a much better cocksucker now, I promise."

"Oh, Kirby," I say. "Why can't you just shut up and play along?"

I half-expect Michael to fly into a rage. He just shakes his head in regret.

"I'm sorry you've decided to be difficult," he says, "but perhaps your journey will help others understand the folly of holding on to sin. Because in the end, you will confess, Eve. You might have no eyes, your nipples may have been cut off, perhaps your kneecaps will be broken, but one way or another, you will confess."

Kirby yawns. "Here's a tip on torture for you, asshole. It's a lot scarier when you just do it as opposed to talking about it beforehand."

"If you insist. We'll start small, as I had suggested you start with your sins."

He steps out of the camera lens. I can hear his footsteps on the hardwood floor. Frances continues to focus on Kirby.

"You'll break, you know," Frances says.

Kirby blows a kiss into the camera. She moves her eyebrows up and down. "Hey. . we've got a camera going. . a hot naked babe. ."

She spreads her legs. "I'm ready for my close-up, director. Want to join me?"

"Jezebel!" Frances hisses.

"Hey, I have a friend named Jezebel, so be nice."

"I think she really is insane," Callie says.

"Either that or she has a death wish," I reply.

"Fearlessness is a common trait in sociopaths," James says. "Look, he's back."

Michael Murphy is carrying a rod, approximately three feet long, with a copper tip and an insulated handle. A wire runs from the base of the rod and out of frame. He shows it to Kirby.

"Do you know what this is?"

"Looks like a picana to me. Popular for use in electric torture in South America and other sorta-civilized places. What's yours run-

about sixteen thousand volts?"

"Thirty thousand. Technology has evolved. Since you're familiar with it, you know what it is capable of. I ask you again to confess a sin, a real sin, with true contrition in your heart."

"Hey, I did what you asked. I really did feel bad about giving a bad blow job. A girl has to have standards."

Michael sighs. "Frances, can you put the camera on a tripod, please? I need your assistance here."

"Yes, Brother."

The sounds of the camera jiggling and Frances doing as he's asked ensue. She appears in frame a moment later.

"Many people think application of the picana to the outside of the body, such as the breasts or genitals, is sufficient. It's painful, I agree, but I've found internal application to be far more effective."

"Me too," Kirby agrees. "So-where? In my mouth, my ass, or my punani?"

"A little ways down your throat," he says. "Try not to breathe in your own vomit. You'd die."

I see a twitch appear at the corner of Kirby's left eye. It's the first sign of a crack in her facade up to this point.

"Hold her head," Michael says to Frances.

Frances grips Kirby's head with a hand on each side to keep her from moving. Michael positions the picana in front of Kirby's mouth.

"You can either open of your own accord, or I will smash this into your teeth until they're no longer in the way."

Kirby doesn't smile or joke, but she does open her mouth wide.

"Last chance," Michael says. "Do you want to confess?"

Kirby sticks out her tongue and makes an ahhhhh sound, like she's having her throat checked by the doctor.

Michael doesn't hesitate. He slips the picana between her teeth and into her mouth. I can tell he's in the back of her throat because her face starts to get red and she begins to gag. Frances removes her hands from the sides of Kirby's head. It's a deft move; they've done this before.

That's when he hits the button in the handle of the picana. The result is instantaneous and awful. Her body goes taut as the electricity causes her muscles to contract violently. Her eyes bug out and her teeth snap down onto the picana with such force I'm surprised they don't shatter. Urine runs down her legs. Her belly jumps; I realize that she's probably defecating against her will. It only lasts a moment, it seems like an hour.

Michael lets go of the button. Kirby's mouth flies open, he yanks the picana back. Vomit comes with it and the convulsions follow. Spasms rock Kirby's body as her muscles and brain try to figure out how to respond to what just happened. Her chair goes over sideways and she crashes against the hardwood floor again, twitching. Her eyes flutter. The spasms eventually die off and we can hear her breathing against the floor, deep, ragged, moaning breaths. Michael waits a moment, just watching. He walks behind her, reaches down, and rights her in the chair. I can't believe how much different she looks now than just ten seconds ago. Her face drips with sweat, her chin and chest are covered in vomit, and her eyes are having trouble focusing.

Michael leans forward. He brushes a lock of sweat-matted hair away from her forehead.

"Now, my child? Are you ready to confess? Don't be afraid, God will forgive anything you are truly penitent for."

Kirby opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. She closes it, swallows, struggles to compose herself. She lifts her head up and gives Michael the sweetest smile I've ever seen on a stone-killer.

"Let's go again."

"Jesus!" I say. "How much longer, Alan?"

"Ten minutes."

Ten minutes? The torture we just saw happened in two.

"I don't know if she can last that long."

"She'll last," James says.

Is that a hope or a prayer? I wonder.

"If you insist," Michael says, "but in the end, the result will be the same. We all break under God's will. God is love."

Frances grips Kirby's head again and Michael brings the picana back up.

"Drive faster," I tell Alan. "Please."

42

"CURTAINS ARE DRAWN," BRADY POINTS OUT. "WHAT'S HER state? Can she take the flash-bangs?"

Kirby's received the business end of the picana three more times. She hasn't broken, but her smart mouth is gone, the surest sign that she's hurting. Only her eyes remain defiant.

"She can take it."

The house is in Reseda. It's an older ranch style home from the 1960s that hasn't seen much updating since. The blue and white wood trim is cracked and peeling. The lawn is full of dead or dying grass. The windows are dirty and the curtains look old. The Murphys don't care about this home; it's just a place to camp between murders. Brady jabs a finger at the picture windows that lead into the living room.

"No finesse. On my go we're going to toss flash-bangs through the windows, and simultaneously smash open the front door and throw in a few more. Then we breach and take them down. My team will enter, we'll call you in when it's clear."

Brady's voice is low and urgent. His men are silent and still, but it's the tense motionlessness of a track runner waiting for the starter pistol to go off.

Kirby screams for the first time and we hear it in stereo; it plays from the computer speakers and filters out from the house.

"Wait for the next scream," I say. "That's when they'll be the most off guard."

In the end, the monsters are all the same. They live for the screams.

Brady looks at me and frowns.

"It's her best chance," I say. "Better another shock than a bullet. She can take it."

Brady processes this in a heartbeat; he nods and then signals to his men in the front to be ready. One is poised at the picture window. Another stands by the front door with a battering ram, while yet another waits next to him, flash-bangs in hand. Brady has his HK53 at the ready.

My team and I stand back by the cars. Everyone has their weapons out. The moon hangs above us all, silver and unforgiving. We'd just arrived, so the neighborhood hasn't yet woken up to our presence. That will change in another heartbeat. There is a sense of time passing by the second, or the millisecond, or the nanosecond. Everything hangs, a tremendous waiting. Kirby screams and the world explodes.

Flash-bangs crash through the window. The battering ram hits the door once, the doorjamb is destroyed as the door flies open. More grenades are tossed inside and again that stereo-echo as they detonate. I see it happen from the outside, I hear it happen from the inside, and it all happens in the blink of an eye. Brady rushes into the home, followed by his men. There's no hesitation in their motion; everything they do is committed, decisive, swift. The camera has fallen over and now faces a wall. I can't tell what's happening inside.

"Come on," James mutters. "Hang in there, Kirby." I don't think he's even aware that he's saying it.

I hear Brady and his men yelling at the Murphys.

"Get down on the fucking ground!"

Grunts and sounds of a scuffle follow. I hear thuds. A minute later Brady is at the door, motioning us in. We run.

The living room is to the immediate right. The Murphys are both down on their stomachs on the floor. They are looking at each other and their lips are moving.

" 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,' "

Michael says.

" 'I will fear no evil,' " Frances replies.

"Shut the fuck up," Brady growls.

They ignore him and continue their recitation.

James moves to Kirby. The smell of feces and urine and sweat are strong in the room. Her head hangs down, her hair brushes her thighs. He kneels in front of her, puts a hand under her chin, and lifts it up. It's a tender act, unexpected.

"Are you okay?"

"S-stupid. . stupid question," she croaks.

She's talking to him, but her eyes are on me. They are pleading with me.

"Everyone out of here except Callie and me," I order. Hesitation and quizzical looks follow. The Lord's Prayer murmurs in the silence, like flies buzzing against a screen.

"I mean it," I say. "Now, please."

Only James seems to understand. He stands up and heads for the door without another word. Brady's men pull the Murphys to their feet and begin to walk them outside. Michael stops in front of Kirby.

"You didn't confess. You're going to hell, you know."

"S-see you th-th-there," Kirby hisses. She tries to blow him a kiss but fails.

"Get them out of here," I say.

Alan is the last to leave.

"I'll watch the door," he says, and pulls it shut behind him.

"C-can Callie clear o-o-out too?"

"I need her help, Kirby," I tell her, my voice gentle. "She was there for me right after. You can trust her."

Callie remains silent as Kirby studies her with a weary eye.

"K, c-can you please get me out of this?"

"Of course, honey-love," Callie tells her softly, kneeling next to the chair.

Callie pulls a pocketknife from her purse. As she begins to cut the ropes, Kirby starts to shiver. I put one hand on her shoulder, move the hair back from her brow with the other. When the ropes are off, she rubs her wrists and sits there for a moment, shaking.

"C-can I t-tell you something?" she whispers to us.

"Anything," Callie says.

She smiles. "I'm ab-b-bout t-to run out of s-s-steam. ."

We catch her as she topples forward from the chair in a dead faint. This is what I'd seen in her eyes, that thing I'd understood. Kirby was about to fall apart and she wanted as few witnesses to that secret as possible.

KIRBY CLINGS TO ME, HER arms around my neck, as Callie washes her in the bathtub. We clean her like a baby, and she lets us. It's a moment of trust not likely to roll by again. Her muscles twitch and spasm, and her grip tightens as Callie (gently, so gently) wipes her private areas for her.

"Want to hear my confession?" she whispers in my ear, so faint I'm sure that only I can hear her.

I say nothing. I feel Kirby's lips smile against my skin.

"I had a friend, when I was sixteen, who got murdered by her boyfriend. He beat her to death and ran. I found him one year later and it took him three days to die. I wasn't even eighteen, but I never felt a lick of guilt about it."

I say nothing. I stroke her hair. She puts her head on my shoulder and sighs.

Everyone, even Kirby, needs to tell someone their secrets, sometimes. Ego te absolvo, Kirby.

43

"WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE BODIES?"

I sit in the room with Michael Murphy, as I have with so many others like him, trying to pry out his final secrets. The last confession. He examines me, my scars, tries (I guess) to look into my soul.

"Are you Catholic?" he asks me.

"Not anymore."

"Do you believe in God?"

"Maybe. What did you do with the bodies?"

He hid from us for twenty years. Where did the victims go?

He sits at this table as he sat at the one in his video clips. The rosary has been replaced by cuffs around the wrists, but the posture is the same. Michael Murphy is exactly where he wants to be. In his mind, jail was just the next best pulpit to preach from, the death penalty he and his sister had received was an opportunity for martyrdom. They confessed without prompting or the need for a trial. In terms of the video clips, "viral" remained an apt term. They've made their way around the world and back again via the Internet. In most instances their use is voyeuristic, the opportunity to peer into the last moments of another human being, to put an ear to the confessional booth. But it can't be denied that they ignited a debate that will probably rage on for months or longer.

There are those who feel that their methods were inexcusable, but that the message still has merit. Murder, one person had said, is not a Christian virtue, but full truth before God is. In other words, we don't condone how they did it, gosh no, but as far as what they had to say. . well. .

There is a radical fringe who consider Michael and his sister to be heroic, revolutionary. I'd run across a website selling T-shirts with slogans like Full Truth or Hellfire and Only God Can Judge the Murphys. All of this would sicken me if not for the most basic truth: support is in the minority. Most Christians, the majority by far, decry every aspect of what the Murphys did. Many have written open letters of apology to the families of the victims on behalf of all Christians and Catholics, and I am reminded of that section from the catechism of the Catholic Church Father Yates had read to me about the guiding principle of love. It's nice to see that for most, those aren't just words. The Murphys remain a ball of contradictions for me. Understanding the monsters the way I do is like harmonizing with a dark melody. I can never duplicate it, not exactly, but I can hit the notes an octave or so above, and from that surmise their song. I've achieved some of that with Michael and his sister, but many aspects elude me. Fanaticism, when it is applied to serial murder, is almost always a smoke screen. Terrorist leaders who preach death in the name of God aren't really interested in God; they're just getting off on making people die. Hitler spoke of strengthening the Aryan race; in reality, he was just another serial killer.

I've seen little evidence that either Michael or Frances took sexual pleasure in the crimes they committed. The physician at the women's prison where Frances has been housed confirmed that she is still a virgin. They never asked for the death penalty to be taken off the table. True believers? Or is there some dark joy buried deep, hidden so well that even they'll never see it?

"Do you really want to know?" he asks.

"No, Michael. I just had some free time today to come and chat with you. Of course I want to know."

He folds his hands and smiles. "Then confess something to me. It does not have to be something huge, but it can't be something small either. Tell me and I give you my word, I'll reveal to you what happened to the others."

I consider this offer. It's never a good idea to trade in an interrogation. Once they have what they want, they don't need you anymore and they can shut down. Michael's drug of choice is truth.

"Swear to God," I say.

"I'm sorry?"

"Swear to God that you'll tell me if I confess to something."

He shrugs. "Very well. I swear to God."

I sit back in my chair and think about it. He's not going to be happy with something like masturbation. It has to be personal, it has to be difficult, it has to ring true, but my personal integrity needs to remain intact at the end of it.

"My mother died when I was twelve," I say.

"What of?"

"Pancreatic cancer."

"I'm sorry. That's a painful way to die."

"Yes, it is. Toward the end, all she did was moan or scream, day and night. The painkillers didn't help."

"That must have been difficult for you."

Difficult? It comes to me now like it was then, a glistening piece of horror. My mother's hair had always been long and full. The radiation had made her as bald as a baby. I'd always thought her eyes were one of the most beautiful things about her. Because of the pain, they rolled in her head, or she squinched them shut tight, or she cried. Her curves had been reduced to a skeletal waste, and her scent, that mother-smell that had once been as comforting and natural to me as breathing, was now alien and reeked of sickness and the Horseman. My dad, bless him, was a good dad, a great dad. He was a wonderful husband to my mom. But he couldn't take it for too long in that room, next to that bed. He'd visit for an hour and spend the next two days recovering. So it was left to me. I sat by her side and stroked her forehead and sang to her and cried with her. She was at home, and we had a hospice nurse, but I got the nurse to let me help with most things. At twelve, I changed my mother's diapers and I both hated and cherished the moment.

"In the last weeks, she begged me every day-sometimes twice a day-to kill her."

Kill me kill me please, honey, kill me, she'd moan or screech, over and over and over. Please, please, please, kill me and make it stop, make it stop, Oh dear God, make it stop. .

"Mom was Catholic. Her faith had always been strong. She raised me to believe. In spite of it all, there she was, begging to become a suicide."

"God tests us," Michael says.

I glance at him and I consider killing him. Just for a millisecond.

"I believed that suicide meant she would go to hell. One day, toward the end, she had a good morning. It happened sometimes. She'd come back to us. Her eyes would get lucid and we could actually talk for a bit. It never lasted long. That morning I could have called my dad in, but I didn't. I decided to talk to her alone."

"About her death wish." It's a statement, not a question.

"Yes. I told her that suicide was a sin, that if she asked for death and got it, she'd go to hell. I told her that she needed to tell me she wanted to live until the end. I needed to hear those words from her."

He cocks his head at me, and narrows his eyes.

Does he see where I'm going? Maybe. Maybe this is his talent, maybe he smells sins like a dog smells meat.

"She was lucid. She still hurt, but I was able to get through to her, and she showed me at that moment what real faith could be. She smiled and told me what you told me. 'God is just testing me, love,'

she said. 'It will be over soon.' 'Say the words, Mom,' I asked her. She was a little puzzled, but she was tired, so tired. 'I want to live to the end,'

she told me. An hour later, she was gone again, back inside the pain, begging for death."

"Your mother sounds like an extraordinary woman."

"Yes, yes, she was."

He leans forward a little.

"The sin, Smoky? What did you do?"

I hate that he's using my first name.

"I just needed to hear the words, you know? So that when I killed her, it wouldn't be a suicide."

There it is, I think. The truth of you.

Because his eyes had widened as I said those words, ever so slightly. Not the widening of shock or surprise, but thrill.

"You murdered your mother?" he breathes.

"I brought her peace," I growl. "The peace that your God wasn't giving her. She was being tortured daily. We don't let animals suffer like that. Why people?"

"Because, Smoky-people have souls."

I feel like spitting in his face.

"Whatever. The bottom line was I poisoned her with an overdose of morphine pills. I knew how; I helped with her medication. And it wasn't a suicide, so, against your beliefs, she didn't go to hell for it."

He taps a finger against the Formica top of the table, considering.

"I have to agree with you on that, Smoky. Your mother went to heaven. Her last, lucid wish was not for suicide. You, on the other hand. ." He shakes his head. "Unless you ask for God's forgiveness, you will never feel His grace."

"Maybe," I say, "but that wasn't our deal. I agreed to confess something to you. I think I've upheld my end of the deal."

He sighs. "Yes, and I did swear to God. But I hope you'll consider this in the future. I hope you'll wake up one day and ask for God to forgive you for murdering your mother. Don't you understand? It's the only way you'll ever see her again. "

"The other victims?" My voice is ice.

"Very well. Dermestid beetles. They're flesh eaters, used in taxidermy to clean the skin from bones. They're very efficient and easy to purchase. We used them to strip the bodies of their flesh, and then we ground the bones into powder and tossed the powder onto consecrated ground."

"You had them. . eaten?" My voice is incredulous.

"The body is just a vessel, Smoky. Their souls are in heaven." He is calm, assured, certain.

"I'm sure their families will appreciate that."

"It doesn't matter if they do or they do not. The truth remains the truth."

I fight the desire to strangle him with my bare hands. Just a few more questions.

"How did you find out about Dexter Reid?"

"Dexter's. . situation became a controversial topic on a number of Catholic blogs. We monitored worldwide Catholic-oriented news via the Internet daily."

I picture Michael and Frances as ghouls, crouched together in the dark, faces lit by a computer screen as they licked their dead lips and sifted through cyberspace.

"Let's discuss your method of operation. Was it always the same?

Frances infiltrated the congregation and bugged the confessionals?"

He nods. "We'd listen to the tapes together and make our choice. Frances would befriend them, learn their patterns."

"And you'd do the killing."

"She helped at times, but generally, yes. That was our division of labor."

"Then she'd stay with the congregation for a while after, so no one would suspect her of taking part in the disappearance."

"Correct."

"You started your. . work before the Internet existed. What did you plan to do originally? With the tapes you made?"

"We weren't certain. We knew we needed to record our work, but I'll admit it wasn't clear to us at first just how those records would be used. Would we send them to a news organization? Direct to the people?" He glances up and smiles. "We trusted God would show us the way, and in His time, He did."

"Why did you change tack with Lisa Reid? You infiltrated her congregation personally."

He shrugs. "Eagerness, I suppose. We spent twenty years building our case. We knew our work was nearly done, and didn't want to wait a second longer than was necessary. As we were going to come out into the open, there was no further need to be so careful. Besides, it gave me the opportunity to leave my own thumbprint on the chalice."

"Weren't you concerned that Lisa would recognize you on the plane?"

"I wore a beard, and changed the color of my eyes. She'd always seen me in a wheelchair before. When someone is handicapped, quite often all people remember is the affliction."

True enough, I think.

"How did you know that your work was done?"

This is a key question for me, the behavior that makes Michael and Frances unique. Serial killers like to kill. They kill until they are stopped by capture or death. The Murphys had effectively stopped themselves by revealing their hand.

"We'd always known, had always agreed, that we would understand the moment when we had done enough. A few months ago, it was given to us that that moment had come."

"How?"

Michael Murphy looks right into my eyes and smiles, and it is the sweetest smile I've ever seen, the most beatific expression on a human face I've ever witnessed.

"God told me."

His voice radiates with awe. This is no joke or test.

"He spoke to you?"

"Even better-He appeared to me. It was approximately three months ago. I'd been sleeping fitfully for some reason that night, which was unusual. I always sleep deeply, and well. I had dozed off for a moment. I was at the precipice, that place where you tumble into true unconsciousness, when His voice came to me."

"What did He say?" I prod, though I don't really need to. He's there, in that moment, hearing the voice of God.

" 'Michael,' He said, 'you've done well, my son. You've walked a difficult path at great personal risk to yourself, but the time has come for the next part of your journey.' "

I notice that only Michael gets the credit in this narrative; no mention of Frances.

" 'The time has come for you to reveal the truth to the world. It will not be easy. Many will revile you and reject the Word, but do not let that deter you. My way is the Way, and you must continue forward even though you walk through a field of broken glass.' " Tears are running down Michael's face now. " 'Yes, Lord,' I cried out to Him.

'Whatever You ask, I will obey. Whatever burdens You give me, I will carry.' " He pauses for a long time. I wait him out. "Then He was gone, and I felt energized and refreshed, even though I hadn't slept. I felt as though I could run for days, weeks, months, years." He comes back to the present, wipes the tears from his face without seeming to notice he's doing it. He focuses on me again. "God put us on that path. God told me we had come to the end of it. That's the way it's always been, for all the prophets since time began."

He believes it. Every word. I can see it on his face, hear it in his voice. The insanity is back in his eyes again, that bright and shining light. Why had they stopped? For the same reason they had started; the Murphys were insane.

"What about Valerie Cavanaugh, Michael? She was a break in your pattern. Each victim had an outward secret that masked something darker. What was Valerie's outward secret?"

He pauses, thinking. "You're right," he admits. "She didn't have one. But when we saw her confession. . she did it to torment her priest, not because she was truly seeking God's forgiveness. You could hear the pride in her voice. Once, she even giggled. That poor man. He struggled with what to do, I'm sure, but the seal of confession is absolute." He shrugs. "Not the same as the rest, but her death still serves the greater message: the necessity for full truth before God. Confession without contrition is the worst kind of lie there is." His voice goes flat. "This world is better off without her."

I cock my head at him. "She made you angry, didn't she? She was the knowing antithesis of what you were trying to say. Your version of Satan."

He shrugs, not agreeing, but. .

"Question, Michael. Why just women? Weren't there any men with secrets worth killing to make your point?"

He stares at me blankly, puzzled.

"What does that matter?"

I find myself at a loss for words. He doesn't see it, I realize. There it is, the blind spot, and it's willful, reflexive, and profound. Selfrevelation, I'd come to understand long ago, real, deep and personal deconstruction, was a luxury the psychopath did not have.

"One last thing, Michael. The scars on Frances's wrists-they're real. When did she try to kill herself?"

He smiles at me, and shakes his head. "She never tried. She needed the scars to play her part. It was risky, but I got her through, with the help of God."

I stare at him. I wish, on some level, that I could muster up a look of shock, or disbelief, but I know I'm long past that. I'm reminded of something a seasoned profiler once told me, back when I was new and bright and could still be shocked: sometimes only the worst stuff is true. I stand up. Right now, I want to get out of here, I want that more than anything. I remember, though, the final thing. I turn to him and smile.

"Michael?"

"Yes?"

"Everything I just told you about my mother was a lie." I smirk.

"You really are stupid. Did you actually think I'd confess to murder?

Here? We're being videotaped, for God's sake."

I leave the room without saying another word, his curses following me. This is my thrill, the thing that widens my eyes: the suffering they feel when I deny them what they need.

"SO IT'S OVER THEN," ROSARIO says to me on the phone.

"It's over. They'll both be put to death, eventually."

She is silent, and I feel that silence, understand it. It's the silence of the unfulfilled, the unfinished sentence.

"Why doesn't it make me feel any better?" she asks me.

"You know why."

She sniffles. She is crying.

"Yes, I guess you're right."

It's not enough because her child is still dead, will always be dead, will never come back. Nothing fixes that, not ever.

"Thank you for calling me, Smoky. And for. . well, everything."

"Good-bye, Rosario."

We hang up and I know good-bye means good-bye for good. The families of the victims don't seek me out; I am forever associated in their minds with the loss of their loved ones. Rosario is grateful, they always are, but I need to be their past, not their future. It used to bother me; I understand it much more personally now. I drive to my next stop and consider the past weeks. Have I learned anything? As much as I despise learning because of my brushes against the monsters, I also know it's one of the main things separating me from them; I can learn and change, they cannot. Secrets. They run through everything we do, everything we are. Religion calls them sins, and says they'll keep us from heaven. They can be big or small. We can hold on to them like they were bars of gold. Everyone has them.

Maybe religion has it right, but perhaps it's just a metaphor. Maybe, just maybe, we carry heaven and hell with us, right here on earth, all the time. Maybe holding on to our darkest secrets puts us in a living hell, and perhaps the relief we feel when we disclose them is a form of heaven.

"HI, FATHER," I SAY.

Father Yates smiles, happy to see me. The church is empty. He guides me to the first pew and asks me to sit down.

"How are you?" he asks me.

"I'm well, thanks. How are you?"

He shrugs. "Better. Some things have changed. Churches have been issued equipment to check for bugs in the confessionals. Issued with the PR edict of 'ensuring, in this age of technology, that the sacrament remains sacrosanct.' "

"Someone's going to put two and two together eventually."

"I agree. But the church is reluctant to admit its weaknesses." He grins. "Which is one of its weaknesses."

"Still not jockeying for a cardinal-ship, I see," I tease him.

"I'm not built for that kind of politics, so it's just as well."

"Yeah, me neither."

"Then I guess we'll both just continue to do what we do."

"I guess so."

"Interesting, though," he muses. "Michael Murphy said that he was about the truth, but in the end, he may do more damage to the safe haven of confession than anyone else in the history of the Catholic Church."

"He'll never see it that way, Father. Not in a million years. They can't deal with their own contradictions."

We fall silent. I look at Jesus, still paint-chipped, still suffering.

"Why are you here, Smoky?"

"I need something from you."

"What?"

I hesitate. Find Jesus again.

Am I sure about this?

"I need you to hear my confession again. It'll be brief."

He studies me for a moment and then he stands up and indicates the way to the confessional booth.

"FORGIVE ME, FATHER, FOR I have sinned. You know how long it's been since my last confession. I lied to a man today. It was a big lie."

"What was the nature of this lie?"

"I told him I had done something, something terrible. I later told him I had lied, that I hadn't really done what I'd said."

"But you had?"

The big question, with the big answer, the one that never leaves me. It's there with me when I wake up, when I go to sleep, as I go through my day. It played a part, I'm sure, in my career choice.

"Yes. I had actually done what I confessed to him."

"Do you want to tell me what you told him?"

"No, Father."

A pause. I can almost hear him thinking this through. I can sense his reluctance, and his suspicion.

"This thing you told him, do you think God heard it too?"

"If He exists, then it was really meant for Him, Father."

"I see. So you want to admit here that what you said was true, but you don't want to say it again."

"Something like that."

He sighs.

"Do you want to be forgiven for this thing?"

"I don't know, Father, to be honest. I just know I want to admit that it happened. That's a start, isn't it?"

"Yes, Smoky. It's a start. But I can't give you penance or absolution this way."

"Penance is under way and has been for a long time. As far as absolution goes. . we'll have to see. I just need to know that you heard me, Father. I'm still not sure if forgiveness is a part of the picture."

I'd ask my mom, if I could.

"I heard you, Smoky. And if you ever want to tell me more, I'll listen."

"I know, Father. Thank you."

I HEAD DOWN THE HIGHWAY toward home and Bonnie and Tommy and I think of my mother. I remember her beauty, her smiles, her temper. I remember every second I spent with her, and I cherish those memories for what they are: times and places that will never exist again.

I killed my mother when I was twelve. I did it from love, true, but I've always wondered: Is that why I can understand the monsters the way I do? Because there's a little bit of monster in me too?

What do you think, God?

He remains silent, which is my continuing and basic problem with Him.

Mom?

Maybe it's my imagination, but the breeze in my hair through the car window feels like a reassuring touch, and I am, for a moment, at peace.

44

"HOW IS SHE?" I ASK.

"See for yourself," Kirby says.

The hotel room Callie chose to quit Vicodin in has seen better days. She's lived inside this room for twelve days now and it reeks of sweat and vomit. She'd refused to go to a formal treatment center, which hadn't surprised me.

"Housekeeping is going to hate us when we finally let them clean this place up," I observe.

"I'll be sure and tip them well, honey-love, don't you worry."

Callie stands at the door of the bathroom. She's pale and she has the shadows of exhaustion under her eyes, but she looks more steady than she has so far.

"How are you feeling?" I ask.

"Like something approaching human. Finally. I think I'll be ready to leave this hellhole tomorrow."

Kirby and I have been taking shifts with her. We've taken turns holding her while she shook and sweated and cursed. We've held her hair back while she vomited. Once, I stroked her hair while she wept at the wanting.

"Geez, about time," Kirby says. "This has really put a crimp in my sex life."

"Mine too," I say.

"Yes, yes, yes," Callie replies. "I haven't seen my man in the buff since this began either. We'll all be returning to our respective lovers soon."

"How's your back?" I ask her. "Any pain?"

She comes and sits down on the bed.

"There hasn't been any pain in my back for a long time, Smoky. The Vicodin became about the Vicodin."

"Wow, so you were a bona fide junkie, huh?" Kirby says.

"I loved my little white pills, it's true, but thankfully, I love my man more. Speaking of which-where do we stand on the wedding?"

"All systems go. Your daughter has been helping with the last details. Brady tried to slip in an invitation to your parents, but I caught it and pulled it from the pile."

"Thank you."

"I aim to please. Anyway, no worries. Everything's set. You just need to get the heck out of here, hit the gym, maybe do a little tanning. ."

"I don't 'do tanning,' " Callie says. I'm happy to hear some of the haughtiness back in her voice. It's a good sign.

"Whatever. You want to look like the corpse bride, it's your funeral. I mean wedding."

"All redheads are pale complected," Callie protests.

"There's a difference between 'pale' and 'junkie white,' " Kirby retorts.

"Is it really that bad?" She sounds distressed.

Kirby sighs. "You're going to make me be nice, aren't you? No, it's not that bad, I'm just giving you a hard time, Callie-babe. Truth is, you look great even though you've been sweating and puking and stuff. I kind of hate you for it."

Callie smiles. "Made you feel bad, made you say it." She sticks her tongue out at Kirby.

"Bitch," Kirby observes.

There's a lull in the conversation. Callie stares down at her hands, obviously working up to saying something.

"Listen close, because you'll only hear it once," she says. "Thank you both for this. I couldn't have done it alone."

"You're welcome," I tell her.

"No problemo," Kirby chirps. "Besides, I got to see you down on your knees, praying to the porcelain god." She chortles. "Wish I could have gotten that on camera."

Callie makes a face, and more good-natured bickering ensues. I listen with half an ear, smiling in the right places. Three women, all proud, all a little damaged. . the burden of our secrets becomes heavy so easily. We don't trust enough to share, and there are parts of us that we keep for ourselves, things our men will never know, however much we love them. Things we prefer, most of the time, not even to share with each other.

But it's nice to know, if those burdens become too great, that we have someplace to go, someone who'll listen to our whispers in their ears and take our secrets to their graves.

"I COULD GET USED TO this, babe. What do you think?"

"Finding a man who can cook is definitely easier than having to learn yourself," Bonnie agrees.

Tommy is making us an Italian dinner. The meat sauce has my mouth watering, and the smell of homemade garlic bread wafts through the house.

"My mom made me learn," he calls from the kitchen. "She said cooking for a woman is a fast way to impress her."

"Smart mom," I say.

"Yes, she is."

"When are we going to be meeting her?" Bonnie asks. I glance at Tommy.

"Why do you ask, honey?"

She rolls her eyes at me. "You must really think I'm retarded, Momma-Smoky. You guys are moving in together, right?"

I scowl. "Who told? Callie? Kirby?"

She smiles. "Give me some credit, guys."

I chew on my thumbnail, nervous. Tommy remains silent.

"Sorry, babe. We were going to tell you soon. How do you feel about that?"

This has been my final concern, the last worry. Bonnie may love Tommy, but it's been just her and me for two years now. We've built our life together. We've needed each other. I've worried how she'd feel about this change.

She walks back over to me and takes my hand. Her smile says everything I need to know.

"I think it's great. Really, really great. Besides-he can cook."

LATE AT NIGHT AND TOMMY sleeps beside me. Through that window I can see the moon again, that ageless, ancient moon. People have danced under it, fucked under it, killed under it, loved under it, died under it. The moon keeps shining; life goes on. I'm thinking about my mom. I wonder why helping her die was less of a burden to me than the abortion. It's the one secret I'd never told, not even to Matt. Now I've told it to a monster, which seems to fit my life. It's never weighed on me that much. It is something that happened, that I don't think about often.

Was it wrong?

I look for the answer, and find the only one I've ever found: I don't care.

She stopped suffering. That's all that really mattered to me, in the end.

I cried at her funeral. I haven't cried for her since. I don't cry now either, but I let myself feel her absence, just a little. I miss you, Mom. Dad was a great dad, but I was always my mother's daughter.

Tommy stirs next to me. I smile.

He's a good man, Mom. Different from Matt. Not better or worse. Just dif- ferent.

My life is messy. I realize I've been trying to put everyone away, to stuff them into their little boxes and cover them with earth. What a waste. The ghosts are there, they'll always be there, and they'll show themselves when they feel like it.

The trick is to continue without the pain of enduring. Like the moon.

It continues to shine and I tell the ghosts to go to sleep now. I turn into Tommy and let myself fall into his warmth.

Welcome back, traveler, someone whispers.

"Mom?" I mumble once before tumbling into a dreamless sleep. The moon shines on.