Tunnel Vision

18

Killing for God took all the pressure off. No issues of conscience or morality. No worry about a bad afterlife. Plus you did good by doing well, just as Father X had said.

A week after dispatching Thomas Pomeroy, Roman Pace got another call on the secure phone. In the same feathery voice, Father X said he had another assignment. Another of Satan’s henchmen. Would he accept the mission? Yes. For the same fee? Yes.

Life was good.

The instruction was for Roman to drive to the parking lot at the Burlington Mall at eight fifteen that morning, where at the base of a particular light pole he would find a small bag containing another payment and another cell phone, which he was to answer when it rang at eight twenty. Like the other, this one was secure. Nonetheless, he was to remove the battery and to discard it and the phone separately to avoid tracing.

At precisely eight fifteen, Roman drove to the parking lot, which was vast and empty at that hour. He spotted a security car moving in the opposite direction, so whoever had hired him knew he wouldn’t be noticed pulling up to the pole to snatch the brown bag.

In it was the money, three banded packs of hundreds, and another cell phone. Minutes later it rang with Father X calling to confirm pickup. Roman then drove off, humming with curiosity as to why a man of the cloth had advanced him another fifteen grand to pop another scientist.

This one was a Dr. LeAnn Cola from the Department of Neurology at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Her death was to look accidental and without similarities to Pomeroy’s. According to her biography, Cola was divorced and living with her fifteen-year-old daughter. They owned no pets because the daughter was asthmatic.

Before he returned home, Roman violated protocol and called back. “I’ve not done women before, so I’m just wondering about her.”

“I can’t go into details, but let it suffice to say that in the eyes of the Lord she has committed acts of abomination against heaven itself.”

“Can you give me a hint like what?”

“No, I’m sorry. But rest assured that you will please God in this service.”

* * *

Number 147 Forest Street in Cobbsville, New Hampshire, was a brick garrison that was nestled in shrubbery on a quiet street with deep lawns. The house next door was lightless. The house on the other side was hidden by hemlocks. Across the street was conservation land. Nearly perfect.

Roman parked down the street and waited two hours until the lights went out, another hour to be certain that mother and daughter were asleep. It was an unusually warm spring night, making him wish he could turn on the AC, except that might draw attention. So he waited in the warm interior, reminding himself that a few months ago he had been saved from dying for this mission. That it wasn’t blind luck, but that God so loved him that He intervened, giving Roman another chance, as if God were saying, You can redeem yourself by doing something for Me. And this was that something. And even a woman could be an abomination against God.

Roman slipped out of his car and cut to the rear of the house. There were four rooms on the second floor; two of them had air conditioners that were turned on. Perfect.

But there was no AC in the downstairs family room, where a screened window was open a couple of inches. He wedged the blade of his pocketknife under the frame, slid that up, and raised the window. No wiring on the window and no motion detector in the room. It always amazed him how most people left themselves so vulnerable. A brain doctor living alone with her daughter. You’d think she would get an alarm system or at least lock the windows.

He slipped inside a family room, where sectional sofas faced a flat-screen TV. All was quiet. He passed through a hallway to the kitchen. No motion detectors anywhere or alarm panel. But he did spot a shiny six-burner gas stove. He moved to the front of the house and the staircase leading to the second floor.

At the top of the landing was a door with a sign, “Victoria’s Room.” The daughter. Across from it was the master bedroom. He inched open the door. In the orange light from a lava lamp he saw the hump of the girl asleep on her back. The AC hummed in the window, chilling the air. That was good, because the girl slept under several blankets, and the machine would drown out sounds.

But first the mom.

He closed the door and cut across the landing to the master bedroom. All he could hear from within was another air conditioner. He opened the door. The woman was asleep in a king-size bed to the right. The AC was blowing chilled air from a window on the left. He closed the door and in the ambient light moved to the woman’s side of the bed. She was making feathery snoring sounds.

He clamped her mouth with a gloved hand and put the gun to her head. “Wake up.”

The woman’s eyes opened, and for a frozen moment she glared at him. Then she jolted and screamed into his hand.

“Your daughter’s in the next room. You scream, I’ll kill her. Do you understand? I will kill your daughter if you make a peep.”

She nodded and moaned that she understood.

He let go of her mouth.

“What do you want?” Her voice was a tightly stretched wire.

“I want you to tell me your connection to Thomas Pomeroy.”

“Thomas … Tom Pomeroy?”

Tom.

“How did you know him? What’s your relationship to him? And keep your voice down.”

“W-we worked together. Who are you?”

“Doing what where?”

“A project.”

“What kind of project?”

“We were working on MRI machines. Magnetic resonance imaging.”

“For hospitals.”

“Yes. He helped develop hardware.”

“That tells me nothing.”

“We were doing high resolution of the brain.”

“Who was paying you?”

“We had a private grant.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know.”

Roman lowered his face and pressed the barrel into her temple. “Tell me the truth.”

“I’m telling you the truth, I swear. Please don’t hurt my daughter.”

Roman said nothing for a moment. “The project. What were you trying to do?”

“Trying to get better control over atoms for quantum computing.”

“In fucking English.”

“To get precise images of active brain cells.”

“Someone murdered Tom Pomeroy and I want to know why.”

“Murdered?”

“What were you doing to get him knocked off? Tell me and I’ll spare you and your daughter. And no mumbo-jumbo bullshit.”

The woman nodded, and Roman pulled back the gun. In spurts she told him things that he had difficulty processing, but not because of the scientific jargon. “And that’s the truth?”

“I swear to God.” She whimpered not to hurt them.

“You believe in God?”

“What?”

“Do you believe in God? You just swore to Him.”

“I—I don’t know.”

“How can you not know if you believe or not? It’s yes or no.”

“I—I … no.”

“Do you believe in Satan?”

“Satan?” Her eyes filled with terror. She shook her head.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m going to tie you up, and in half an hour I’ll call 911.”

“Okay, but please don’t hurt my daughter. I beg you.”

“I’m not going to touch her.”

He rolled her onto her side, then put loose cords around her ankles and hands. When she was in place, he slipped a sleep mask over her eyes. “Okay, open your mouth. For a gag.”

She opened wide. And in a flash, he pulled from his jacket an aerosol can of methane gas used to test gas leak alarms, and he jammed the nozzle into her mouth and released a continuous spray. She tried to snap her head away, but he clamped down on her face with his other hand and continued to force-fill her lungs until she passed out. It took less than half a minute. When she was still, he removed the tethers and gag, positioned her on the pillow, then turned off the AC and left the room with the door ajar.

He returned to the daughter’s room. She was still asleep. As he stared at her darkened form, he rehearsed how he’d dispatch her without a clue. Before she knew what hit her, he’d straddle her body, lock her with his knees, then with his gloved hands clamp her carotid arteries, stopping the blood flow to her brain. In under a minute, she’d pass out. Then he’d close her eyelids and while her lungs still functioned fill them with gas from the aerosol.

But something held him back. His mission was Satan’s handmaid, not her kid.

He closed the door, then slipped down the stairs and into the cellar, leaving the door wide open. With a penlight, he found the furnace and extinguished the pilot light. He removed the batteries from a fire-and-gas alarm and disconnected a contact wire from the alarm at the top of the second landing. In the kitchen, he extinguished the stove pilot light to prevent an explosion. By morning, the place would be full of methane gas, including the master bedroom, but not the daughter’s room with the AC.

Perfect, and another fifteen thousand in the green.

If true, he also had incredible information that could be worth a king’s ransom to the right buyer. Although he knew nothing about those who bankrolled him, what the woman revealed had explosive implications.

In fact, by the time he arrived at his condo, Roman was so wired over the possibilities that he needed a double hit of vodka to compose his mind to rest. But as he dozed off, like a closed loop in the back of his brain, he heard the lulling whispers of Father X’s promise play over and over again:

A second chance at life eternal.