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Over coffee in the morning, I was still wondering why Blake had turned out as he had. He was a guy who had everything going for him and he'd thrown it all away. I decided we all have our demons to fight. Some people win and some lose. I didn't have time to delve deeper than that because I had a serial killer to find.
My first concern was to figure out how I was going to make sure Judy's brother read the article about the priest in his local paper. Since he believed no one knew about him, I couldn't just write him a letter. I decided that when I put the story about Father Bartholomew in the little local paper, I'd leave a copy on Devon's porch myself. If I could get my story on the front page, it would be almost impossible for him to miss seeing it. First, I called the priest, asking him to email me a recent photograph, and then I typed up a short article about his recent return from a visit to Rome. I thought I'd have to burn a favor to get it published exactly as I wanted it, but when I approached the paper, they promised me they would be happy to run it. However, it cost me two-hundred dollars to get a guarantee it would make the front page. Now all I needed to do was make sure I was ready for Devon's reaction to the article.
Several times over the next few days, I considered reading John in on my plans, but each time I rejected the idea because I wasn't sure he was really back to full strength. I'd rather piss him off because I excluded him than get him killed. When I'd visited Father Bartholomew, I'd gotten his keys to the strip mall church where he usually worked. He had a small apartment attached to the sanctuary. I’d mistakenly thought the small space would be easy to stake out. When I made the trip over there to see how my would-be priest, Arnie, and I should handle dealing with Devon, I realized we would have a lot more to deal with than I'd believed.
The church was in an older, poorer section of town. The buildings were a combination of wood and stucco. Urban improvement hadn't reached there yet, and some of them looked ready to collapse. The strip mall had looked small from the front, but it extended almost to the back of the long skinny lot where it was sitting. Sections had been added multiple times over the years. The rooms where the priest lived were attached directly to the church, with multiple doors connecting them. The whole building must have had five or six doors to the outside, and I didn't even try to count the windows. It would be impossible to orchestrate how the killer would approach, so we would have to be content to control one room. That should be sufficient, since the killer would have to find his target. I chose the priest's living room as the best place to trap Devon because it was small and had only one entrance door. We could nail all three windows shut, leaving the door as the only approach. I would black out the windows so we didn't have to worry about him being able to see us from outside the room. He couldn't shoot what he couldn't see. I called Arnie to be sure he was comfortable with my plan. The PI agreed that there didn't seem to be a better way to handle the situation. We agreed we would need to stay at the priest's house Wednesday night after our story came out in the paper that day.
I had three days until Wednesday with nothing special to do. Sunday, I spent the long afternoon visiting with John, who was finally beginning to seem more like his old self. He'd been through a real horror, but I believed he would make a full recovery. Connie must have thought so too, because for the first time since the accident she seemed relaxed.
Sunday night, I woke from one of the worst memory dreams yet. I didn't know whether to replay it. Obviously, that strategy hadn't worked before, so I decided not to bother, but I was more than a little concerned that this time around, the dreams were blending the old horrors with my life now. I had dreamed about the priest's house. That wasn't strange, because catching Devon before he could kill anyone else weighed heavily on my mind. The unacceptable part was that in the dream, Clive was chasing me through the warren of rooms at the strip mall. Even though I had no way of knowing if she could help or not, I was glad it wasn't long until my appointment with Evelyn Voss.
On Monday, I slept most of the morning, making up for my interrupted night. I was grateful this daytime sleep was dream-free. It was later than I usually ran by the time I woke, but I decided to go for a run, anyway. At least this time, no one would be trying to kill me. I hoped! I was about halfway through my usual route, and I must have been wearing down some because I hadn't realized there was anyone close when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I whipped around, almost falling in the process. There was Kit, easily keeping pace with me and looking like a model. He laughed at the expression on my face. “Don't look so surprised. You often run this same route, so when I went by your house and you didn't answer, I thought there was a chance I might find you here, and if not, I could definitely use the exercise.”
“The look of surprise is because I can't believe how easily you manage to sneak up on me. One of these days I could react before I realize it's you.”
He grinned and picked up the pace a little. Seeing him had completely revived my sagging energy, and the rest of the run back to my house was almost a sprint as we tried to outdo each other. We spent the rest of the day together. I didn't ask him why he wasn't at work, and he didn't question me about what I was up to—we just cooked, talked, and enjoyed being together. It was an almost perfect time, except late that night when I was almost asleep and Kit said, “You know that one of these days we are going to have to have a discussion about our relationship. Something important is happening here, and we need to make some decisions.”
I didn't answer him. There was nothing I could say. I had to believe that a conversation like what he was describing would end our relationship, and I knew I wasn't looking forward to that. When I woke in the morning he was gone, but this time the rose on the pillow was white.
I used the rest of my free time to catch up on my backed-up email and took a little time to work on the next job I wanted to do for myself.
At dusk on Wednesday, I met Arnie out back of Father Bartholomew's place and we quietly let ourselves in. Our first night there was uneventful, but I had thought to stock the house with plenty of food, so we enjoyed a good meal while we waited.
It was twelve-twenty Wednesday night when the man Arnie had watching Devon called to let us know he was on the move and headed our way. Not long after the call, we began hearing furtive noises in the building. We had no intention of going to investigate, so we waited as patiently as possible. Our plan depended on Devon's coming to us. We needed him to make it clear he planned to kill Arnie, mistakenly believing he was the priest, so we could apprehend him and call the police. They would ultimately search Devon's house and find the evidence needed to convict the killer and make sure he went to jail. I thought the plan was foolproof, and I was looking forward to putting all of John's business behind me and getting back to my own pursuits.
As the noises crept closer, we tensed, but remained silent. I assumed Devon would try sneaking through the door to take us by surprise. I was wrong. He slammed through the door at full speed and immediately fired two shots into the dummy in priest's garb that we had placed in the rocking chair. Somehow, he realized our ruse almost immediately, and before I could stop him, he fired once more, hitting Arnie. The noise of the shots in the small room messed with my hearing, so I didn't hear Arnie hit the floor, but I saw him fall. Almost before I realized what had happened, the killer was back out the door and running. Arnie yelled, “Go, go get that SOB! I'll be fine.”
He must have been screaming, but it sounded barely above a whisper to me. I tossed him my phone, hollered back for him to call an ambulance, and took off running. The old building was poorly constructed and creaky. I could feel the vibration of Devon's running feet and thought I could faintly hear the footfalls, which meant they were really loud, or my hearing was returning. I was running full tilt in what I hoped was the right direction when I suddenly realized that the only thing I was hearing or feeling was my pounding feet. At some point, Devon had either stopped or begun moving more stealthily. Either way, the noise I had been making put me at a disadvantage because now he knew where I was rather than the other way around. I quickly moved as silently as possible to a more protected area of the room I was in.
We had run far enough to be in the back part of the building. It was a hodgepodge of flimsy walls, doorways with no doors, and low ceilings that looked rotten and unreliable. The few windows that were visible were boarded over or filthy, making visibility poor, so I couldn’t be sure, but I thought the room we were in was some type of storage space. It would have been a hoarder's wet dream. Mostly unrecognizable junk was randomly stacked everywhere, and I wondered vaguely if it was church detritus or leftover debris from previous tenants until I noticed I was crouched behind a floor-to-ceiling stack of molding hymnals. I waited as silently as possible. My hearing must have been returning, because I was hearing the normal sounds an old building makes. I was hoping to remain hidden long enough that Devon would make a noise alerting me to his location.
I didn't need to wait long. One moment I was crouched and waiting, and the next I was doing my best to scramble away from the falling wall of hymnals. I got a glimpse of Devon's head above the toppling books as I darted out a doorway and down the hall. I hoped to be quick enough to come around behind him while he was still shuffling through the mess to see if I'd been trapped.
I wasn't that lucky. He was already in the doorway I'd gone through moments before, and he saw me at the same time I saw him. He got off one shot before I was off and running. I wasn't hit, but it made the seriousness of the situation horribly real. I was no longer concerned with getting this killer arrested. Now I just wanted to put him down any way I could. At least these rickety rooms didn't hold the sound of a gunshot well enough to deafen me again. I thought I had run back toward the front of the building, but was too turned around to be sure. I didn't want to return to the original room in case Arnie was down and helpless, so I ducked into a room I hadn’t seen before and reached for my phone. Damn, I'd given the phone to Arnie! That had been stupid, since I knew he had a phone of his own. I wasn't going to be able to call for help, so I could only hope Arnie was alert enough to have already called. So far, I hadn't heard any sirens heading this direction.
Once again, I crouched silently, hoping for some telltale sound to pinpoint Devon's location. This time I was behind what I thought were three old sofas stacked on top of each other. Surely a fire marshal wouldn't find this place safe.
After a short wait that seemed unbelievably long, I heard what sounded like a shuffling of feet, then something heavy falling off to my left, and possibly a muffled curse. I thought the church sanctuary was in that direction, maybe. The noise was barely audible, but I believed it to be a room or two away, so throwing caution to the wind, I rose and walked toward the sound I'd heard. I needed to keep Devon hunting me, because if he fled, I had no way of proving he was guilty of multiple murders. When I entered the next room, he was ducking out a doorway on the opposite side. Again, he saw me at the same time I saw him. I quickly backed out into the hall and ran down two more rooms, where I stopped to be sure he was following me rather than trying to make his escape. I waited, intending to bring him down as he came through the doorway. I heard him coming and as soon as I saw him, I fired. He moved so quickly I was sure I'd missed, but then he went down hard. Hopefully, this manhunt was over.
Taking no chances, I approached carefully and kept my gun pointed in his direction the whole time. When I reached his side, my eyes searched for evidence that he was wounded. His leg was banged up some, but it wasn't a bullet wound, so I assumed it was the result of whatever had fallen earlier. He was lying partially on his side. Still wanting to confirm my shot had found its mark, I pushed him onto his back with my foot. The stick in his hand connected hard with my shoulder at the same time that I registered the fact that I saw no blood. My arm went numb from the impact and my gun fell to the floor. Knowing I was in trouble, I kicked hard at the injured place I'd seen on his leg, and he screamed even as he rose to his feet. I made no more moves, because he'd dropped the stick and transferred his gun from his left hand to his right and it was pointed directly at me.
I waited silently to see if he'd feel the need to gloat or if he'd just fire and run. After a tense moment, he said, “I don't know who you are, but I have two kills to complete, and I can't let you interfere. I owe my sister justice for her murder. I didn't plan to kill anyone other than the responsible eleven, but you've left me no choice.”
He said this calmly. He didn't seem the least deranged, but I knew better. I debated telling him who was really responsible for his sister's death, but I was afraid it would push him further over the edge to know that he'd killed nine innocent people. I said, “You have no reason to kill me. Just go and leave me here. Take my gun and go.”
“Ah, but you and your friend are the only ones who know my identity. I’m pretty sure he is bleeding out as we speak. With you dead, I will hunt down the last two murderers with no interruptions.”
I was sure he was ready to pull the trigger, but while he'd been talking, I'd heard a slight noise in the room behind him. I hoped he hadn't noticed. I held my breath as I watched Arnie come into the room with his gun pointed at Devon. To delay my imminent death and to keep him from noticing Arnie, I said, “I can't believe you'd murder an innocent person, because it seems to me that would make you no better than your sister's murderer.”
Unfortunately, Arnie wasn't moving too smoothly, and this time when he made noise Devon heard him. He whirled around and was about to fire when I body slammed him from behind. My right arm was still numb, and I wasn't sure I could bring him down with my left. Hence the body slam. He went down as I'd hoped, but I went down right along with him. As we hit the floor, his gun fired and instantly, I felt his body go limp beneath me. I untangled myself the best I could and felt for a pulse. I felt nothing and knew the man was dead, because the bullet had hit him in the neck.
The only thing left was to call the police. Once all the evidence came out, John's superiors would know he had been right. I would give him everything I had on what had caused this string of murders so everyone involved could be brought down. What I didn't want was to be involved myself. Arnie had already called an ambulance and the police, and finally I could hear sirens in the distance. Arnie had worked with me enough before that I didn't have to explain when I told him I was leaving. He just said, “Go. I've got this. Oh, you should know that the next time you call me for help, your fee will be double my usual.”
I laughed, even though I knew he was telling the truth, thanked him, checked to be sure he'd live until the ambulance arrived, and asked him to call Detective Perez. I wanted John to be involved so a full investigation could take place. He would recognize the dead man and leave nothing to chance. As the sirens got closer, I asked for my phone back and took off out a side door, wanting nothing more than to go home and lick my wounds.