The Halo Effect

55

It was too late. He saw me stare at the door. He saw what I saw, knew that I knew. There wasn’t much I could do. I had nothing to protect myself with. He was on the other side of the room. I was only steps from the door. I had nothing left to lose.

I opened the door. I didn’t think, didn’t worry. Too much had happened. Too much was at stake.

I stared into the dark space.

There she was. A nun dressed in full habit lying on the floor. Cleo’s lovely eyes weeping tears, her mouth taped up, her hands and feet bound. Her forehead dotted with sweat.

I was afraid to turn around and look back at Elias because now I was certain who I was in the room with. And I knew that there was no way the Healer was going to allow me to leave now that I’d found him out. Why hadn’t I been able to put it all together sooner? I’d had the book and it was full of clues. True, in my office Cleo had referred to Elias as Caesar, and in the book she had referred to him as the Healer. But she’d also told me that she had several names for him. She’d told me that. And I hadn’t remembered.

I shut my eyes. I breathed. What could I do? I was a fucking therapist. How could I get out of this?

I had to talk him down. It was what I did. It was all I did. I knew how to help people with words.

“Elias, let’s sit down.”

He shook his head. “What the fuck do I do with you now? Why didn’t you leave? I don’t want you here.” He was close to crying.

“What do you want?”

“I just wanted to learn the secret to how to make her clean again.”

“I can help you with that. If you will untie her, take her gag off. She can sit down and we can talk it out.”

“Oh, please, Dr. Snow. I can’t do that. I will not get caught.”

“Yes, you will. Eventually, you will.”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t get caught. Not in hotels, not in your office. It was me who ransacked your office that day. I was trying to find Cleo’s book. To take it away from you. I didn’t want you to get any ideas.”

So that’s why he had gone to see Simon Weiss. To get into the institute. To be seen there so if he was seen there again it wouldn’t be so obvious.

“No one figures me out,” he bragged desperately.

“Let me help you.”

“There is no way you can. You had to look, didn’t you? You had to be a nosy bitch cunt and look, didn’t you? Damn it. What have you done?”

“You’re right. It’s my fault looked. I am nosy. Because I care about you. And about Cleo. I care about people who are confused and who don’t understand and who think there’s no way out.”

“I’ve killed five women. What way out is there?”

My heart was pumping so hard and fast that I could hear it in my chest. He had been enticing prostitutes to hotel rooms to see if he could turn sinners into saints. Cleanse them. Create a halo effect that he could then use on Cleo. My eyes went to her gaunt face. Cleo was on the floor, helpless. Elias was across the room. Cleo was staring at me, sending me a message with her eyes. For just a second I focused on her. Her eyes darted to the floor by my feet, then over in Elias’s direction. Back to the floor, then up to my face. I knew she was trying to send me a message, but I couldn’t read it.

I took a step toward her. He let me. I moved closer to her, even closer, and then reached down and wiped away her tears.

“Holy water,” he said behind me. “I tried that, too. I bathed her in it. I practiced on those other bitches. I experimented with the sacraments, with the host, with everything I could think of to turn them pure.”

“And when you couldn’t, when they were still prostitutes, you killed them.”

“So they could be saints. So they could go to the Virgin Mary. At least I could do that for them.” He was stronger now. It was the bravado. One of the signatures of a psychopath. He had been brilliant. A lawyer. Coming to me and saying he was a suspect. Deflecting suspicion by taking it on.

He was rifling through a desk drawer. Pulling out papers. Searching for something else. Putting things in his pockets.

“I’m prepared for this. Totally prepared for this.”

I didn’t ask him what he meant. Cleo’s eyes were signaling me again. From the floor to Elias. To the floor.

He was pulling things out of the briefcase now. Not law papers. It wasn’t a briefcase, after all. It was a sacrament case. Out came holy water, a large gold chalice and a purple silk vestment. He threw them all on the floor. They had failed him. He kicked at the chalice and it rolled across the room. If only it had come in my direction I could have used it as a weapon.

He hits them with a heavy rounded object.

I heard Noah telling me about the weapon. This must be it, what he used to knock them all unconscious.

He was almost finished emptying the case. What was he going to do with us when he was? Did he have a gun? He didn’t need one. He had his hands. He had strangled five women. He would just-

And then I knew what Cleo was looking at. What she was trying to tell me.

Elias walked toward me, reaching into his pocket. For a gun? A knife? What was he doing?

“I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t need to. I’m leaving. You and her. Leaving you both here.” In his hand was a roll of the same kind of duct tape that bound Cleo’s hands and feet. The silver slash that covered her mouth.

As he walked he peeled off a long strip and ripped at it with his teeth. He was getting closer. My heart seemed to have stopped. Everything in me was calculating how fast he was moving and how close he was getting and how much time I had and when I was going to have to move.

Five feet away.

Too far.

Another step. Another.

Three feet away.

Still too far. One more step. I tried to focus all of my energy on what I had to do. On not thinking about it. Because if I thought about it too much I’d freeze.

His eyes were boring into mine. He was in a psychotic state. Not knowing, not feeling, acting out, his unconscious on the surface, his reason and rationality deep inside of him, useless to us both.

He took one more step, and trying not to move too quickly, not to alert him, I slipped off one of my insanely high heels. Then as fast as I could I bent down and-

“What are you doing?” he shouted.

I didn’t answer. I swung my arm, the toe part of my shoe gripped tightly in my hand. Muscles tensed, stretched, fingers holding tight, but I felt nothing. He watched the movement, surprised by it, not understanding the swinging arm. He was fast and he was strong, but I had that one moment of shock on my side. He wasn’t expecting it. He looked up for one brief second, and as he did, the thin, three-and-a-half-inch heel came down at his face and went right into his eye.

The scream was mine, the blood was his. I felt it hot and liquid on my own cheek. His hands went up to his face. Howling, incoherent, he circled like an animal, caught in the intensity of his pain.

He was moving without knowing where he was going. One eye blinded, the other squeezed tight in agony. He made another circle. Closer to the door. He was losing blood. I had no idea how badly I had hurt him.

I needed time. To call the police, to get Cleo free. How long was his pain going to last? I opened the door to the apartment itself and went at him. If he saw me, if he understood, I couldn’t tell. The one open eye did not focus on me. He was still making guttural animal noises, ones I knew I’d never forget. I had caused that pain. I smelled of his blood. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered, and with all my strength I went at him again, praying that he was still in shock, that I’d be able to do this.

He reached out with one hand, grabbed my hair and pulled before I could get at him. Amazed at the power of the one-handed grip, I took the pain, let him bring me closer, and then swung again with the shoe.

It hit his back and I heard a crack. Had I gotten his shoulder blade? A rib? A fresh scream ripped out of his mouth.

But still he held on to my hair, his other hand covering his eye, now drenched in a waterfall of blood. I let him hold my hair, and as if we were doing some macabre dance, we moved in more circles. Then we were at the door to the hallway again, and I was maneuvering him closer and closer to the threshold. Finally, I used my head like a battering ram, and despite his hold, despite the fire on my scalp, I pushed at him and hit his chin. The force of my skull crashing against him like that must have caused him new pain, for he fell backward into the hallway with a cry of agony.

I had only moments to get up and slam the door, to lock us in and lock him out.

Up. I swayed. Put my hands on the door, pushed. The last thing I saw was a thatch of my brown hair intertwined in his fingers.

The sounds of the locks clicking into place gave me time to breathe, to think through what I had to do next. Bottom lock. Middle lock. Chain bolt. Cleo had to be untied. I needed her help. And I had to call the police. Elias might have keys on his person to get back in. No, I’d used the chain. Still.

I grabbed the phone off the receiver and dialed 911, shouted the address of the apartment building.

“You have three minutes. He’s the Magdalene Murderer. He’s in the hall. I’m barricaded inside but I don’t know how long I have. He might have keys.”

“Can you tell me the nature of-” the 911 operator asked.

“It’s a fucking emergency. He can kill us. With his bare hands. Get someone here. Call Detective Noah Jordain. SVU. Tell him. Tell him Morgan Snow called. Fast. Do it.”

I dropped the phone and fell to my knees in front of Cleo, ripping at the duct tape around her hands. I couldn’t tear it. It was too thick. I bent over, mouth to her wrist, teeth bared, and I tried to rip it the way Elias had. Too tough.

Her eyes were wild. She was looking behind me at the desk. I got up. There was a simple letter opener sitting on a pile of papers. Not sharp enough. I needed scissors. But there were no scissors.

I heard the awful metallic sound of the locks clicking. Of tumblers opening. It was so loud I thought I was going to go deaf. There was no other sound in the world but the key unlocking the door. There were two keys. There were two locks. But there was a chain. I’d put the chain on.

Giving up on Cleo’s hands for a minute, I gripped a corner of the tape covering her mouth and ripped. She grimaced, and as the tape came away, her scream erupted, growing louder and louder, so loud I couldn’t hear the keys anymore.

“Get a knife,” she said fast. As if she had been waiting to say it. “The kitchen is behind you.”

I didn’t look back, but ran into the kitchen and flung open one drawer, another, a third, and then saw a knife.

She smiled at me when she saw it gleam. It was such a hopeful smile that for a moment I actually believed we’d be all right. He wouldn’t be able to push the door open. The chain would hold. The police would get here.

Of course he wouldn’t be able to push the door open. It was a strong chain.

Slashing at the duct tape, trying to stay clear of Cleo’s skin, took more time than I had. But at last I freed her hands.

“Can you do your feet?”

She nodded.

I gave her the knife.

He was still on the other side of the door, his fingers trying to work through the space. But it wasn’t wide enough. We were safe. For a minute more.

Cleo had worked her way through the tape and was on her feet.

I ran into the kitchen again, to the intercom. I lifted it from the receiver.

“Hello,” the doorman answered slowly.

“Don’t come up here. Don’t let anyone up here except the police. Call 911. A woman is hurt. There is a killer loose in the hallway.”

“Who is this?”

“Just do it. We need help.”

I let the receiver drop and ran out to the living room. Cleo was looking at me, eyes wide with terror. My gaze swung to the door. The fingers were gone. I knew he wasn’t there.

“Where is he?”

She shook her head.

“Can you talk, Cleo?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

And then I heard the click again. Loud in my ears like gunfire.

“Where is he?”

“There’s a back door. In the kitchen.”

I looked around. Where were we going to go? How much could he hurt us? There were two of us. Couldn’t we overpower him? I hoped so, but I didn’t know.

“Come,” I whispered, and took her by the hand.