“…the dogs out from Madison. We’ve got to be ready for a manhunt… I hope we don’t, but I want them either way. Of all people, we can’t lose him… And ask them for hostage negotiators. Yeah, two officers, an EMT, and a driver.”
Davis glanced at a mile marker. “Almost to Kenosha. I sure hope they could get a roadblock.” The squad leaped over a low rise and slid into a depression on the other side.
Brake lights everywhere. Ahead, they thickened into an angry swarm, completely blocking the road. Beyond them, a tanker truck lay on its side, a yellow-green cloud rolling up demonically from its split tank.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Carls shouted. “We’re out of this one. That’s got to be chlorine gas up there. We’ve got something even more deadly than the Son of Samael here.”
“…Squads Eleven and Seven, set roadblock here…
Twenty-Two, assist in evacuating the highway…”
Carls grabbed the handset. “What about Samael, Captain?”
“He’s Chicago’s man, now.”
BOOK III
TWENTY
It was an easy enough commute into Chicago. Once Samael tipped the chlorine tanker, he drove only another mile before finding a new ride. Ahead of him, a black sedan pulled to the shoulder to make way for the ambulance. Samael drove up beside the sedan and used the gun and the dead policeman to coax the motorist from his car. Samael and the dead cop got in. That was just the first hijacking. A string of other vehicle trades made dogs and helicopters useless. By the time he headed into the Loop, Samael was driving an ’07 Mercedes, his dead buddy beside him. They looked like any pair of brothers from Chicago. The cop paid for parking. In a seedy garage, Samael changed into the police uniform and put his brother under a blanket in the trunk. He drove to the South Side and found an ill-lit Stop ’n’ Shop. There he left the car running and walked away. Before he’d even crossed the street, the Mercedes roared off. The chop shop crew might not even notice the corpse until they’d gotten the chassis stripped. By then, it would be too late to go to the police.
Samael spent the rest of the night on his feet, walking toward town. A white cop might have been a target on the South Side, but no one challenged him. Lucky for them. When dawn broke, Samael spotted the spire of St Charles on the horizon and headed for it. It was nine o’clock.
“Time to make amends.”
St Charles was a limestone megalith supported by massive buttresses, screened in statuary and wrought iron, and gabled in walnut. There were no yellow bricks. There was no clapboard rectory. In every way, it transcended the sort of building that St Francis was in Woodstock. Even so, Samael could not walk up the seventeen steps without remembering the time that Keith McFarland – that he and Keith McFarland – had killed a priest in a confessional.
The sign out front said “Open Confession.”
Samael smiled. He had come today not to kill a priest. He had come to be washed of his sins.
He ascended the stairs. The cop clothes fit him tightly, forming him up, making him something he hadn’t been before – something much better than he had been in the defeated orange jumpsuit.
Samael passed through the large central door. He remembered to take off his hat. It was slightly too large, and it had a bullet hole in its crease. The narthex was small and gray, with polished marble and maroon carpet. The pile was low, but it bounced as though made of springs. Beside the door was a smooth niche with a white basin. Samael touched his hand to the holy water, made the sign of the cross on his forehead, and then took a thin trickle of the stuff into his mouth. He felt better with that swallow and scooped up a second.
Why don’t humans bottle holy water for their tables?
Why not bathe in it? Samael felt clean with the very thought.
Hand still dripping, Samael crossed the narthex and pushed through another set of doors. He stepped into the cool, magnificent silence of the sanctuary. The stained-glass lancets were ten men high. Beautiful statues of Mary, saints, and apostles stood in silent witness in niches around the chamber. Stately shadows of marble columns fell across orderly rows of walnut pews. There, beside the pews, were the wardrobe-like compartments where the priests would be sitting. He crossed slowly to the pew adjacent to the open confessional and sat, waiting.
“You can come in, my son,” came a voice from the metal screened box. It was the tone of an old man, thin and vulcanized by years of trial. “I am alone.”
Samael nodded and rose. The police hat turned nervous circles in his grip. He entered the confessional and closed the door behind him. The close darkness within was soothing, comforting.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.”
“Are you Catholic, child?”
“I’m not sure what I am, but I might as well be.”
“What troubles you, child?”
“You will tell no one what we discuss?”
“Of course not. On my honor.”
A deep sigh. “I am the Son of Samael. I killed my guards, a paramedic, and an ambulance driver.”
Silence returned from the other side of the goldpainted screen. The walnut box breathed the cold air of the sacred space. “You are he? The Son of Samael?”
“I am,” Samael replied. “Are you frightened?”
“Yes,” said the priest. Though soft, his tone had intensified. “Yes, I am.”
“You needn’t be. I have not come to hurt you.”
After a pause, the priest spoke again. “Go on, child. Tell me of these sins.”
“Have you been following my case?”
“No, but it has been thrust upon us. If you have ears and eyes, you can’t help knowing what has happened.”
“In the last months, I have become convinced I never was an angel, that all along I was a human deluded by some psychosis. I had a woman who helped me, who convinced me I was human, that I had to live. I love her, Father, but she’s – she’s been-”
“Donna Leland,” the voice said, comforting. “Yes, I heard about the accident.”
“And now, without her, how can I…? Now, how can I be anything without her? How can I be human at all?”
The priest’s voice became a thin, strong band. “You came to the right place, child. First, you must confess. It is guilt that made us mortal. Guilt drove us from the garden of paradise. You have lately fallen thus, too. Confess, and let the full weight of your guilt lie heavy on you.”
“Yes, Father,” Samael responded. He felt the profound weight of his atrocities on his bowed neck. “I have murdered many people, Father. I do not know how many. At least ten. Perhaps more – twenty, forty, eighty – I do not know.”
“Imagine how many, and for each one, light a candle in your mind. Let that candle remain there, burning, all the rest of your days, to remind you of the lives you snuffed out.”
“Yes. Yes, I am lighting them even now. It will be a terrific blaze. But there is more. I am a homosexual – or was, before Donna. I was a homosexual.”
“That, in itself, is not sinful, if you have not acted-”
“I have acted upon it – I believe. My memory’s not so good, but I do think, at least once, in the East Village-”