14.

It was past midnight when Debra pulled into a motel south of Rockford. She paid cash and went to her room. By later that day, Wednesday, they might finally connect the three deaths and roll out the term “serial killer.” But there was such a difference between her and some psychotic, compulsive killer, one driven by secret voices or bizarre sexual urges.

Debra heard no voices, and even if she did feel a deep, delicious stirring with each kill—all that blood, the torn flesh, who wouldn’t feel something?—hers was no compulsion. Hers was a free decision, made under Divine urging, to take action against evil, to even the scales for the terrible, secret suffering those priests had caused. And for Debra there was something else. Every dead priest led her closer to the bitch.

*   *   *

Debra knew she had God-given gifts that not many people had. Among them, she was able to distinguish between the significant and the incidental, and so knew where to keep her focus. For example, she had recently been distracted by thoughts of revenge against the one who’d so horribly slashed open her neck and face that long-ago night, but she put such thoughts aside. That one had been but an ignorant girl, acting out of mindless fear … and the damage she’d done had been repaired. Debra would maintain her priorities: dealing with the bad priests and the woman.

Besides, God had shown again how he brought good out of evil, even out of the terrible wounds the ignorant girl had inflicted on Debra, and the disfiguring scars that followed. Deprived of medical attention, bleeding and in pain beyond measure, Debra had fled, and God had given her strength and wisdom. She made it to the compound in Sicily, where her great-uncle Umberto took her in. Umberto, her grandfather’s youngest brother. Even in his old age he was ruthless and maintained his hold on his family. Still, he was no match for Debra.

Although secretly naming him la capra because he was a skinny, grotesque goat of a man, she’d quickly adapted to his perverse sexual desires. Umberto enjoyed her moans and gasps, no matter how artificial, reveling in her attention. She became his princess, and he made his servants cater to her. One of them, his driver, who also piloted his small plane, came to taking Debra on long drives in the country—“love drives,” they called them, filled with fierce pleasures of which there was no need to fabricate—and he even taught her how to fly the plane.

Meanwhile la capra, filled with loathing for the greedy family that was anxiously waiting for him to die, was wildly generous to his newfound protégé, lavishing upon her large sums of money, all of which she wisely moved at once out of the country. And above all else, he helped her create her new self.

Most of the plastic surgeons studied her snapshot and promised to restore her to her former beauty. Debra, however, wanted more. She interviewed surgeon after surgeon until she found the one whose computerized predictions most pleased her. He was flown down regularly to the little hospital near Umberto’s compound, bringing with him his staff and his specialized equipment.

There had been so many painful procedures. First to remove the scarring from her neck and her face, and then to give her the new look she desired. She became the new Debra, unrecognizable to her foes, and able to carry on. After that was accomplished, and before Umberto’s paranoia could embrace her as well, she fled Sicily and came back home.

*   *   *

Yes, she’d been gifted, but being gifted was not enough. Debra knew that. One had to work hard, too. And she did. Her careful surveillance of Emmett Regan on Monday—before she’d helped him pay for his sins—had unexpectedly brought an answer to the problem of how to get close to the priest to come after Regan. She hoped she hadn’t squandered her opportunity by not acting at once. But again, action without careful planning was dangerous, so she’d spent Tuesday working out the possibilities.

Even as she strategized, she kept up her surveillance of the bitch, and this brought its own rewards. The woman took her pervert priest uncle to visit her husband, and a new idea sprang up in Debra’s mind, one that beared nurturing. God was good. And then the trip to Rockford to meet with the sheriff … that verified the woman’s intent to seek to interfere, to insert herself into Debra’s world. God was very good.

The punctured tire would keep the woman on edge, and tomorrow … priest number four. Already. Things were moving quickly.

Now, though, she needed sleep.

*   *   *

But she couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t fair.

Wide awake, Debra stared up at the ceiling in the dark. It was unfair that she had to lie there and relive an awful deed she had never intended. Unfair that she had to hear again the muffled whines and gasps, feel again the hopeless struggle for life, the writhing and jerking under her powerful hands. The sudden stillness.

It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t wanted to kill him, even when he lunged at her. That was his nature, his instinct. It was easy now to think of more humane solutions, but all she could think of then was that someone would hear and come to investigate before she could finish her work with the miserable Father Immel. But the priest’s cute little dog—braver than the pervert himself—just wouldn’t stop barking. She’d had to do a bad thing.

She consoled herself that out of every bad thing, even sadness and guilt, God drew something good. Always. She had run away in fear and abandoned her brother, Carlo, and God was using her flight to make her available to love Carlo back into wholeness. As a child she had been violated, over and over, and God was using her rage to make her into Lizzie Borden multiplied, taking the axe not to one, but to seven abusive fathers. Treating each of them according to His holy will.

“You must treat each priest according to God’s holy will.” That’s what Sister Clare had said, that day way back in sixth grade when the other kids were complaining about the new priest, Father Lasorda, who was mean and sarcastic and smelled like ladies’ soap. But Debra, the only one who knew just how evil this priest really was, said nothing. She knew Sister Clare would never believe such a terrible thing. No one would believe her. Not her classmates, because her family was so rich and so powerful, and she was so pretty and so smart, and they were all terribly jealous and hated her. Not her mother, because … well … she just wouldn’t. And her father? He knew already, and he let it happen. So Debra had sat at her desk, wanting to scream out the truth but not able to.

“I understand, dear children,” Sister Clare said when the children complained. “But remember, every priest bears the mark of the most holy priesthood, placed by God upon his soul. This is why you must treat each priest—including Father Lasorda—according to God’s holy will.”

A difficult teaching then for Debra, a child always waiting, always wondering whether this night she must lie again, speechless, breathless, under those whisper-soft strokes—tantalizing, terrifying strokes—from the man her parents embraced and called “Father.” But a teaching that made perfect sense to her now. “Treat each priest according to God’s holy will.”

Perfect sense. And so she finally slept.