Kane hustled into the precinct building and whipped off his dripping hat. One of the officers squeezed by him on his way out.
"Morning, Lieutenant" the officer said. His tone was a little too cheerful.
Kane grumbled. "G.o.dd.a.m.n rain. It"s supposed to be summer."
"It"s Seattle," the officer said, letting the door swing shut behind him.
Kane slapped his hat against his leg to shake off the rain as he made his way to the office where he found Ravenwood waiting by the door. She looked fresh and bright-eyed, holding two steaming cups of Starbucks. He was soaked, bleary-eyed and looked like a pile of crumpled laundry.
"Well," she said, "look what the cat dragged in. Bad night?"
Kane grunted and unlocked the door. She followed him in and set his coffee on the desk.
"Thanks," he said, hanging his coat on the back of the door. Yeah, bad night. Couldn"t sleep knowing this was the day."
"Figured. How"d it go with Morran?"
"All right, I guess. I showed him one of the coins and told him how they were being used. The numbers on them. The whole thing. He thought it was pretty weird. I told him it gets weirder."
"Uh-oh."
"Yeah. Wish I hadn"t said that but it just fell out of my mouth. He wanted to know what I meant. Kept pressing me for more information."
"What"d you tell him?"
"I opened the door and told him to get the h.e.l.l out of my office."
Ravenwood grinned. "Well, at least he left with something to chew on. Should keep him busy for a while." She pulled the morning edition of the Seattle Sound Times from her briefcase and handed it to him. "Seen this yet?"
"What now?"
"No big headline. Just a few paragraphs buried on page three. Seems the wives and some relatives of the dead preachers have all been in communication with each other for about two weeks now."
"What?"
"They"ve set up a private chat room on the internet where they talk about what"s been happening. Like Morran, they don"t think this string of deaths is just a series of coincidences. They"ve organized an interdenominational prayer group. You know. Hoping for some divine revelation to give them some sort of an answer to what"s happened."
Kane snorted. "Good luck with that. G.o.d quit answering prayers a long time ago."
She narrowed her eyes and studied his face. The comment was similar to others he"d made over the past few weeks. "And you know this, how?"
Kane didn"t answer.
Ravenwood leaned back in the chair and folded her arms. "Why do I get the feeling there"s something you"ve been keeping from me?" She knew she may have crossed the line and she mentally braced herself for an explosion. Instead, he surprised her by carefully rolling up the newspaper with all the expertise of a seasoned delivery boy and maintained his silence. The look on his face seemed distant. Maybe he was considering revealing his deepest secret. Her eyebrows raised in antic.i.p.ation.
He lobbed the paper over to her and gave a look of fatherly approval when she caught it. Or maybe it was fatherly pride. In any case, she knew the look. She"d seen it in her own father"s eyes when she was a little girl and he was teaching her how to catch a baseball.
Kane took a sip of coffee. "It"s personal."
Ravenwood nodded. "Sorry. Didn"t mean to pry." She was disappointed that she didn"t get more of an answer but relieved that she hadn"t set off his fuse. That, in itself, was a genuine miracle. Proof positive that there is indeed a G.o.d. "Anyway," she said, unrolling the paper and thumbing back to page-3. "There"s more. You"ll love this."
"I doubt it. What is it?"
"Not all of the members of these families are satisfied with just prayer groups alone. The brother of the second victim is a hard core right wing political activist and he"s talked a few of the others of that persuasion into conducting their own investigation."
"Great. Here it comes. Just what we need. A roving band of Christian vigilantes."
She nodded. "That"s one way to put it."
Over the next few hours they continued to discuss various aspects of the case. There were moments, however, when the conversation would lapse into complete silence, a silence that each of them privately recognized was not nearly as uncomfortable as it would have been even just a week ago. During one of those moments Kane cast a glance at Ravenwood.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing."
As the hours pa.s.sed, they occasionally checked the clock in antic.i.p.ation of the call they knew was coming. Somewhere in the city, preacher number seven was about to take an unexpected detour through h.e.l.l on his way to Heaven and only one person knew where and when it would happen.
At 5:15 p.m., the phone rang.
CHAPTER 31.
A Few Hours Later...
In a low-rent trailer park on the outskirts of the city, 72-year-old Pastor Pete Kanearthritic and partially confined to a wheelchairsat in his trailer staring at the TV. As he mindlessly scratched the itch on his arm beneath the floppy sleeve of his drab gray bathrobe, the reporter on the screen stared back at him from her location just outside the church where the latest victim had been found. He fumbled with the remote and turned up the volume.
"...number seven in a string of recent deaths. And again, as in each of the previous cases, there were no eyewitnesses and there are no suspects in this case as far as we know. Police are remaining tight-lipped when it comes to any details concerning their investigation of these bizarre incidents. However, we did receive confirmation about those Batman coins previously rumored to have been found stuffed into the mouths of the victims. Now, with a little detective work of our own, we were able to find such a coin at a local retail shop that specializes in vintage comics and related memorabilia. These coins came in sets of nine, each individually numbered "one" through "nine" and... can we get a good close-up of this?...and I don"t know if you can see, but this one happens to be stamped with the number "four". We have gathered some informationunconfirmed at this pointconcerning these coins. It seems the perpetrator of these crimes is using these coins in sequence. The coin found in the mouth of the first victim was stamped with the number "one". The second victim, number "two" and so on. So it seems that the mystery killer"
The old pastor clicked off the TV. His wrinkled hands were shaking. Something was stirring in the dark recesses of his mind. That coin... I know that coin... Oh, dear G.o.d...
He wheeled himself around and rolled down the short narrow hallway, past a cheap velvet painting depicting Christ surrounded by a group of adoring children. He continued on past a photo of his son, Brian, graduating from the police academy. He maneuvered into his tiny bedroom and came to a stop in front of a tall dresser. He paused a moment, drew a deep breath, and scooted his pale, hulking body to the edge of the wheelchair. With a final, painful effort, he dropped to his knees in front of the dresser and opened the bottom drawer.
Inside the drawer was a lifetime of forgotten items: a discarded hair brush; a broken watch; miscellaneous papers; wrinkled receipts; several pencils with erasers that had turned hard and brittle; a crucifix on a broken chain; a tattered book of hymns from an earlier life; and then finally... the box.
He brought the small cedar box to his lap, removed the lid and shook the contents onto the floor. There, amongst a stack of old photos and several of his forbidden keepsakes, he saw the coin. "Oh, my G.o.d," he muttered under his breath. He stared at the coin for a long moment, trying to remember. Worth, Worthy. What was it? Duck...worth! Ronnie? No... Rodney. That"s it. Rodney Duckworth!
He picked up the coin and searched for the number. Squinting through his bifocals he found it: No. 9. The coin dropped from his trembling fingers. He swallowed hard and fell back against the wheelchair. Dear G.o.d. He"s coming for me.
CHAPTER 32.
Six Days Later...
Cowl awoke to the vague, disturbing sound of a voice inside his head. He knew the source of the voice. He knew he was changing, growing weaker as the Beast within grew stronger each day. There was no turning back now. It was all far beyond his control. Cold and shivering, he drew the covers up around his chin.
The voice spoke again. "You are a worthy servant, my friend. Gelal, the seventh offspring of the Old Ones"
"Yeah, I know," Cowl said in an off-handed tone. "He that invades the beds of women like an incubus..."
"Indeed, that very one now stands with the others at the Gate of the Abyss, waiting to come forth. Well done."
Cowl struggled to sit up. "How long have I been asleep?" His voice was hoa.r.s.e, his mouth dry.
"Six days."
"Six days! What the h.e.l.l? What, exactly, is happening to me? I feel so"
"What you are feeling shall pa.s.s. The metamorphosis is nearly complete. Our energies are merging. An equilibrium of sorts shall soon enough settle your discomfort. Trust me. That which we each desire most is soon to be realized. Number eight is next. And then, your "Someday". Simple as that."
"And you? What about what you want?"
"After the ninth sacrifice has been accomplished I will need you to acquire the one thing that will give me the power to realize my goal."
"One thing? And that would be?"
"That, my friend, would be The Keys of the Gate Keeper."
"The what?"
The Beast laughed quietly. "When the time is right. Now sleep."
As if under a powerful hypnotic influence, Cowl"s eyes closed instantly, his consciousness quickly fading to black.
CHAPTER 33.
Later That Day...
The afternoon sun filtered in through the half-drawn blinds in Harlan Bodine"s small, third-floor, two-bedroom apartment as he sat on the edge of the bed that once belonged to his son, Robbie. Harlan"s life changed dramatically a year ago, the day his beloved 16-year-old son committed suicide, shot himself in the head, an hour after leaving a Mega Therion concert.
Prior to that, Harlan"s wife had abandoned both of them when Robbie was just 10 and Harlan raised him on his own from that point on. But Robbie couldn"t seem to stay out of trouble in spite of Harlan"s best efforts to keep him on the straight and narrow. Still, the kid had a brightness, a s.p.u.n.k about him that Harlan admired, treasured really, as it reminded him of himself. He never gave up on the kid and there was always hope that things would work out. Then came the boy"s obsession with Mega Therion. It wasn"t even the band so much as it was the band"s strangely charismatic leader, Rye Cowl.
Robbie"s fixation on Cowl was just another phase, a typical teenager"s quest in search for his own ident.i.ty. That"s what Harlan kept telling himself. But he soon sensed something else was going on, something considerably more worrisome than a harmless phase. He found books about witchcraft and demonology in Robbie"s room. The boy was changing. It was subtle at first but gradually the signs became dramatically more apparent. He was taking a noticeable and disturbing turn toward a dark side that Harlan had never seen before and the entire transformation, Harlan believed, was somehow connected to Robbie"s obsession with Rye Cowl.
Now, sitting on the edge of Robbie"s bed, Harlan turned a gun over and over in his hands, with a box of sh.e.l.ls by his side. The small but powerful pistol was a rare Russian-made semi-automatic used by the KGB. It was known as a "silent pistol" because it fired special cartridges that suppressed their own sound, in effect, a built-in silencer. It was the perfect weapon for what he had planned. He"d had the gun in his coat pocket when he and the other protestors gathered at the concert hall to support Pastor St. Martin"s ill-fated demonstration against Rye Cowl but he didn"t have a chance to use it. It would have been a bad idea, anyway. Too many people.
That was then. This is now, he thought. He stopped fidgeting with the gun, tightened his grip on it, raised it up at arm"s length and took aim at the poster of Cowl that Robbie had left tacked to the wall. Cowl was somehow responsible for his son"s death. He couldn"t prove it but that didn"t matter. He just knew it was true. He was also certain that Cowl was somehow responsible for the deaths of all those preachers. There was one sure way to find out.
Harlan had been following Bloodhound Morran"s articles in the paper. He knew about the 9-day intervals between the mysterious deaths and there were now three days left until the next onethat is, if Cowl was still alive by then. And if he wasn"tand if the ninth day pa.s.sed without another attack on a preacherthat would be all the proof he needed.
With the life-like image of Cowl in his sight, Harlan zeroed in on a point between the musician"s eyes and pulled the trigger. -CLICK- Sayonara, you satanic son of a b.i.t.c.h.
But drawing a bead on a poster was one thing. Pulling it off for real was another. He considered several possible scenarios and rejected them one by one. They were all too risky and most were too complicated. Then it hit him. The idea was so simple he had to run it through his mind several times to make sure he wasn"t overlooking something. It couldn"t be that easy. Could it?
CHAPTER 34.
The Next Day...
Finding out where Cowl lived had not been difficult. A simple Google search turned up hundreds of fan sites and celebrity articles about the band and it"s charismatic leader. Harlan jotted down the address and typed it into Google Earth for driving directions. It was while he was printing out the directions that he realized the one thing he"d overlooked. A delivery truck. Purchasing a mock UPS uniform, a pair of fake gla.s.ses and a mustache from the costume and display store had been easy. Looking into the mirror, he adjusted the gla.s.ses and patted the mustache. His own son wouldn"t have recognized him. He barely recognized himself. But the truck. Could he just show up at Cowl"s door without a truck parked on the street? Would anyone notice? Probably not. Besides, what choice did he have?
That afternoon, in full disguise, he drove past Cowl"s home and parked the car around the corner. He"d rehea.r.s.ed the scenario in his mind a dozen times. The neighborhood was quiet, not a soul on the streets. It was perfect. The empty s...o...b..x on the seat next to him was wrapped in brown paper. Cowl"s name and address were printed boldly on top in black Sharpie. The bottom of the box was cut out. He picked up the box and stepped out of the air-conditioned car into an oven. He couldn"t remember a summer in Seattle ever being this hot. He winced as the glare off the hood of the car momentarily blinded him. He ducked back inside the car and grabbed a pair of sungla.s.ses from the visor. He tossed his fake gla.s.ses into the car, put on the sungla.s.ses, then straightened his uniform and started the short walk toward the old mansion.
CHAPTER 35.
Three Minutes Earlier...
Cowl looked at the caller I.D. It was Jason. He picked up the phone.
"Yeah, Jase. What is it? I"m kinda busy here. ... What? Why? The concert in Frisco isn"t for another week. Why do we need a rehearsal? ... I don"t care. ... Like I said, I"m busy. If you guys want to rehea.r.s.e, go ahead. ... What? ... Oh, for Christ"s sake. Okay! Jesus. ... Yeah. ... No, not here. Why not your place? ... Well, then Rick"s place. ... Oh, all right. ... Yeah, okay, we can do it here. ... Tonight? Um... All right. Yeah. Nine o"clock. ... Okay, yeah. See ya."
Ah, good! A little music to liven up the place.