The Killing Room

SIXTY

Byrne lifted Roland Hannah to his feet. He walked him across the large basement room, toward the candlelight. Hannah’s hands were bound behind him, his mouth gagged.

When they reached the circle of light Byrne uncuffed the man’s hands, sat him on the old wooden chair. He removed the gag from Hannah’s mouth, sat down next to him. Byrne looked at Gabriel. The boy was crying.

While he was gone the woman removed her dark coat. Dressed in a flowing white gown, she now sat next to Gabriel. Around her waist was a corded white belt. In her lap were a pair of golden knives with razor-sharp edges.

I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire … and white raiment.

Roland Hannah cocked his head, as if he’d suddenly heard something.

‘Ruby,’ he said.

Mary Longstreet blushed. ‘Preacher,’ she replied. ‘How did you know it was me?’

Roland Hannah smiled. His teeth were small and yellowed. ‘A flower does not lose its bouquet, does it?’

‘Only when it dies, I reckon.’

‘Even then it lingers.’

Mary Longstreet reddened even more deeply. She remained silent.

‘You have become a woman,’ Roland said.

‘A long time ago.’

‘How long has it been?’

Mary Longstreet looked at the floor for a moment. ‘A spell, Preacher.’

Byrne noticed a slight change in the woman’s accent. The West Virginia had begun to creep back into her voice.

‘And your boy?’ Roland asked.

‘The devil is still inside him.’

Roland Hannah said nothing. Without the dark amber glasses, the man’s eye sockets were deep, scabrous holes in the candlelight.

They sat, the four of them, in a circle. Every so often Byrne would glance at Gabriel. The boy looked small, and terribly frightened. His hands were shaking.

Mary Longstreet gestured to a room off the large space that was the basement of the cathedral. ‘That room yonder,’ she said to Byrne. ‘It must happen there.’

‘Beneath the sacrarium,’ Byrne said.

‘Yes, sir.’

The sacrarium, Byrne now knew, was the sink in which all consecrated items had to be washed. What flowed from these sinks could not be treated as other waste waters. The marks on the lampposts were made from the earth beneath the churches, washed by decades and centuries of Christ’s blood and flesh.

Mary Longstreet stood, put both knives through the corded belt. Byrne saw that one of the knives sliced through the thin white fabric. A blood rosette bloomed. She had cut herself. She didn’t seem to feel it.

As she crossed behind Roland Hannah, Byrne noticed that she now had something else in her hand. At first, in the dim light, he didn’t know what it was. Soon he was able to focus. It was an antique hairbrush.

‘Remember how I used to brush your hair, Preacher?’ she asked.

To Byrne there was no question that this woman standing in front of him — a woman who had killed at least five people, a woman who now had a pair of razor-sharp daggers within reach — was regressing before his eyes. Her body language had become more adolescent, her voice had risen a half-octave. Her accent was becoming more Appalachian with every word. She pronounced the word hair as har. She was returning to the age she was when she met Roland Hannah for the first time.

‘I do, Mary Elizabeth,’ Roland said. ‘You still have your mammaw’s brush?’

Mary Elizabeth, Byrne thought. Not Ruby. Hannah was trying to manipulate her.

‘Yes, Preacher. Save for my boy, it’s all I have left. Ever what I’ve done, I’ve done for him.’

She began to slowly brush Roland Hannah’s hair.

‘Your hair’s gone right gray, Preacher. White, some.’

Roland Hannah smiled. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

Byrne looked at the brush, and understood. Mary Longstreet had kept it all these years. It was from this brush she’d gotten Roland Hannah’s hair, evidence she used as bookmarks in the missals. Evidence she used to get him out of prison, and into this chair.

‘It’s still pretty, Preacher. Y’all had the prettiest hair. For a boy.’

She continued to brush Roland Hannah’s hair in long, careful strokes. Byrne made eye contact with Gabriel, who seemed to be edging off his chair. Byrne saw the boy look into the darkness of the basement, toward the stairs. He was getting ready to run. When Gabriel looked back at Byrne, Byrne shook his head. It was too risky. Mary Longstreet was just a few feet away, and the knives were very sharp. He’d never make it.

Still, Gabriel got ever closer to the edge of his seat.

When Mary Longstreet finished brushing Roland Hannah’s hair, she placed the hairbrush on her chair, then drew one of the knives from her waistband, the dagger tipped with blood. One by one she extinguished the candles. When she had snuffed all but two, she positioned herself behind Gabriel.

‘Ruby?’ Byrne asked.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I want you to do something for me.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘If I can.’

Byrne glanced at Roland Hannah, then back at the woman. ‘I want you to take me instead.’

She looked at Byrne with curiosity. ‘You? The devil’s not in you.’

In that moment Byrne felt the weight of his own sins, just as he knew that it didn’t matter anymore. None of it — the job, the visions, the anguish over the city he loved, the sadness that in all that time he had not made a difference. The only person in this room who mattered was Gabriel.

‘You don’t know the things I’ve done,’ Byrne said.

The woman stared at Byrne for a long moment. She lay the dagger gently on Roland Hannah’s right shoulder. ‘Don’t you understand, detective?’

‘Understand what?’

‘The Preacher is Philadelphia,’ she said. ‘He’s the sixth church of the Apocalypse.’

Byrne saw the candlelight dance on the keened edge of the blade. He had to keep her talking. ‘I do understand. But what of the last church?’

Mary Longstreet’s eyes softened, and Byrne knew. She was the last church. When Roland Hannah was dead she would take her own life.

‘I can’t let you do this,’ Byrne said.

Whatever softness had come to Mary Longstreet was instantly replaced by a red rage.

‘You have no say in the matter, sir.’ In an instant she stepped behind Gabriel, put the blade to his throat. ‘Maybe the boy is Philadelphia. Maybe this is how it will be.’

‘Don’t,’ Byrne said.

She flipped the knife, reversing it in her grip. It seemed to be a long-practiced, expert move. She touched it to the boy’s forehead. ‘I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem.’

For a moment Mary Longstreet’s words echoed off the stone basement walls, unanswered. Then:

‘He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith.’

Mary Longstreet’s eyes flashed at the sound of the voice. It was Roland Hannah’s.

‘You! You don’t talk, Preacher,’ she said. ‘You don’t talk at all.’

‘We can be together again, Mary Elizabeth,’ Roland said. ‘Don’t you see? We can leave this wretched place.’

‘No, sir.’

‘We can found a new church. A church of our own. Together.’

Byrne saw Mary Longstreet’s eyes lose focus. For a moment it seemed she couldn’t hear or see anything, that her vacant stare was cast inward, at a place back in time.

‘You can be my eyes,’ Roland said.

Roland Hannah stood up, took a hesitating step forward, his hands stretched in front of him. Mary Longstreet didn’t move, didn’t try to stop him.

‘You’ve always been special to me, Mary Elizabeth. You know that. Ever since I set eyes on you that first time in Brandonville. Remember?’

Mary Longstreet’s hands began to tremble. Byrne saw the tip of the blade pierce the skin on Gabriel’s forehead. A trickle of blood ran down the boy’s face in a twisted rivulet.

Byrne knew he had to act. He stood up, slowly walked across the circle. He held out his hand. ‘Ruby?’

The woman said nothing.

‘I will kill the Preacher for you.’

‘That is a task for my son,’ she said. ‘He has waited a long time.’ She put the blade to Gabriel’s throat. ‘I’d thank you kindly to sit down now, sir.’

As Byrne took a step back he noticed movement in the vastness of the basement, shadows growing on the candlelit walls.

Jessica and Maria Caruso were in the room, guns drawn. Byrne saw other figures in the darkness. There had to be a dozen officers.

Mary Longstreet saw them, too.

In one fluid motion Byrne spun and knocked the knife from Mary Longstreet’s hand. Just as quickly she drew the other dagger. She danced to her left with blinding speed and drew the blade across Roland Hannah’s throat. Hannah’s body jerked and thrashed, spastic in its death throes. He put his hands to his throat, but he couldn’t stanch the bleeding. As blood spurted across the circle, extinguishing one of the remaining candles, Mary Longstreet flung herself at Gabriel. Byrne dove in front of the boy. The dagger entered the right side of Byrne’s stomach, slashing clean through. The pain was white fire.

But it didn’t stop Byrne. He reached for the hand that held the weapon and tried to turn the woman around.

In the madness of the moment Byrne saw Jessica run toward them. Hands slicked with blood, Byrne lost his grip on the woman. Mary Longstreet pivoted, regained her footing, and slashed wildly at Jessica. As Byrne fell to the floor he saw the wound open in Jessica’s shoulder, above her Kevlar vest.

No, Byrne thought.

No.

Then, as blackness descended, and the last of his will fell away, a hellish fury came to the cathedral basement. Gunfire roared. The smell of cordite and blood filled the air.

For Kevin Byrne it all faded to a distant past, a time when he was just a young boy, and these walls held more mysteries than answers.