Chapter Sixty

Lucifer in the Flesh

“You really sure you want to do this?” Darrell Riley asked. The six-foot-six man with the Texas drawl was the warden at the Pit, a for-profit, maximum-security prison on a sprawling patch of land in Dulles County, Virginia.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be,” Jimmie Bernwood said.

“Shit, I wouldn’t be either,” Riley said, holding his palm up to a security sensor.

A door straight out of Star Trek opened for them, and they entered the Pit’s solitary confinement wing.

Jimmie’s visitor badge identified him as “Barry Oliver.” An FBI agent. He’d called in some old favors—the last favors he had in his debit account—and set up an appointment Sunday morning to see one of the prison’s highest-profile prisoners. Jimmie was already waist-deep in shit . . . why not dunk his head all the way under?

“You really think this guy has any information on your killer?” Riley asked as they walked down a long, barren corridor.

“Doubtful.”

Riley screeched to a halt. “Then why are we down here on a Sunday morning? I could be at church right now.”

“And I could be tailgating in the parking lot at the Washington Palefaces game,” Jimmie said. “It’s still the preseason, but at least the beer’s real even if the football ain’t. Unfortunately, another body turned up last night along the turnpike. Same markings as before. Second one this month.”

“I haven’t heard about any of this on the news.”

That’s because none of it is true, you nincompoop.

“We’ve managed to keep it out of the news,” Jimmie said. “People would freak out if they knew somebody was out there re-creating the Zodiac killings right down to the last detail.”

Two armed guards stood alert outside the cell door and backed away to give Riley room to use his palm to gain access. The security here was tighter than at the White House.

Jimmie flipped absentmindedly through his file folder, which was stuffed with printouts of the original Zodiac killing victims.

“He may not have information about this new killer, but we believe he’s the only one who can help us get in the mind of the killer,” Jimmie said.

The door slid open. A long walkway led directly to a glass cage measuring twenty feet on all sides. The shirtless prisoner was facing away in the other direction, but Jimmie could see that his upper body was bursting with tattooed muscle. There was a mattress on the floor of the cage and a bedpan, but nothing else. It reminded Jimmie of the time he’d caught a praying mantis as a kid. He’d placed the insect inside an old fishbowl with a few blades of grass. It had died after three days.

“There he is,” Riley said. “Rafael Edward Cruz. ‘Ted,’ to his friends—if you can find any.”

Jimmie laughed, because he thought that was what the warden expected of him.

“There’s nothing funny about a man who’s killed as many innocent people as Cruz has,” Riley snapped.

“Sorry, you work with sick sons of bitches day in, day out, you tend to get a twisted sense of humor, you know what I mean?”

Riley shook his head. “Just get on with it so we can both get home before the game starts.”

Jimmie started toward the cage. The pathway wasn’t simply a pathway—it was a bridge. On either side, it dropped off into an infinite darkness. So this was why they called it the Pit. Somewhere in the building, he guessed there was also a pendulum. Edgar Allan Poe had once lived in Virginia, so it made sense. In an insane way.

He stopped. Riley wasn’t following him. “You’re not coming?”

“This is as close as I get to that monster,” the warden shouted from the doorway. “I’ll be right on the other side of the door. If you need help . . . shout. Not that it will do you any good.”

“He can’t get out, can he?”

“Theoretically, no. But they also said he couldn’t be the Zodiac Killer because he was born two years after the killings began—and look how wrong they were.”

Jimmie nodded. Before he reached the glass cage, he heard the door close behind him. He was all alone with the man authorities believed to be one of the most prolific and vicious serial killers in history. The man whose presidential aspirations Jimmie had personally destroyed with a two-hour-plus sex tape. The man who had every reason in the world to want revenge on him. Would several inches of industrial-strength glass be enough to hold Ted Cruz back?

“Mr. Bernwood,” Cruz said without turning around. “What an unpleasant surprise.” And his thin, ghoulish giggling filled the room.