Detective Leland is widely considered the foremost expert on the man known as the Son of Samael. Police indicate that her death was falsely reported in order to keep the Son of Samael from targeting her during her coma.
Sources in the hospital indicate that Leland is pregnant, perhaps with the child of the Son of Samael. Despite an automobile accident and a two-month coma, the unborn child survives. Detective Leland has chosen to keep the baby, according to sources. She has one month in which to have a legal abortion. Detective Leland is reported to have claimed that the child “is the only innocent.”
Leland is scheduled to appear at tomorrow’s plenary session on catching the killer. Security will be tight at the session, open only to police personnel, fearing that the Son of Samael might try to attend the conference.
“I thought you were dead.” A sucking breath came into him. “I died, too. It’s too late for me, now. It’s too late for us.”
The coffee felt hot on Samael’s true lips, glued behind and beneath those of his victim. He folded the paper once, twice, and then set it beside his plate. The eggs were getting cold.
“But it will be good to see you again, Donna, my angel,” he said to himself, tears tracing the line of spirit gum under his eyes. “I’m glad one of us still lives.”
Sergeant Mike Uriel sat in Arlington Heights’s East High School theater. Nearly a thousand delegates were in attendance. Many were detectives, many others beat cops, administrators, dispatchers – even neighborhood watch captains, ministers, teachers, reporters, boy’s club advisors, and other average citizens. The theater had a carnival atmosphere: masses come to gawk at human grotesqueries.
That’s why they will never catch me, thought Mike Uriel, leaning back in his seat. They all think I’m human.
All but, perhaps, one. Detective Donna Leland spoke from a wheelchair, unable to stand for long periods. She wore a suit jacket and blouse, but in place of the slacks was a skirt that allowed room for her pregnant belly.
“-I have, needless to say, learned a lot about serial criminals in my pursuit of and relationship with the Son of Samael. Profilers from the Quantico Behavioral Sciences Unit have given me a crash course in understanding the thinking of psychotics and psychopaths. Being Azra’s confidante has taught me even more. We were companions, the killer and I. We were intimate. I knew Azra the man before I knew Samael the monster.”
The crowd’s polite hush deepened into silence. Unfair, Donna. Unfair. You said you would not testify against me. You said you would not abandon me.
“The inevitable result of our liaison is this child I now carry, his child. The other result is an especial insight into the mind of this man. I share these insights with you in hopes, not only, of getting him off the streets, but also of helping him. Of saving him and all of us.”
The lines are drawn now, my angel. You have betrayed me. The lines are drawn.
“For example, is this man a psychotic or a psychopath? Is he deluded about his own nature, and therefore committing his crimes due to paranoid schizophrenia? Or does he know exactly what he is doing, merely disguising the fulfillment of his violent sexual fantasies in a guise of madness?
“Originally, we had Keith McFarland to explain many of the disorganized, psychotic elements of these crimes. No longer. The Son of Samael has likely killed another twenty-three people without McFarland. Even so, these crimes continue to show signs of a psychotic – many clues left at the crime scenes, high-risk victims, ritualized manipulation of the body, and so forth. Remember, our man has likely committed these acts solo.”
Yes, I committed them on my own, but was prompted by you and all of you and the hosts of Heaven and Hell and God him- self. You all are complicit in my crimes. You all are accomplices, and you all will be victims.
“On the other hand, other aspects of the crime scenes
– those committed with McFarland and those committed solo – indicate someone utterly methodical, manipulative, and premeditative. Certainly Azra showed all these signs, and his canny ability to elude and taunt police even now demonstrates this psychopathic side.
“Add to this obvious discrepancy two very distinct and equally incredible stories of this man’s past. The first story, reported widely by the Son of Samael and, by all appearances, believed by him, is that he was the angel of death assigned to the greater MilwaukeeChicago area. His work as an angel of death fits very nicely with the psychopathic elements of the crimes. Control is the hallmark of this kind of killer, knowing the victims in advance, humanizing them during the act, and taking an artistic care in the ways the deaths occur.
It is the truth. I was an angel. Only among humans does the truth enslave.
“The other story, that the Son of Samael was a POW MIA from the Gulf War, fits well with the psychotic elements – a man driven to commit heinous acts by some half-understood delusion, sometimes in broad daylight, often leaving a crime scene filled with clues.”
That is the lie – the lie you taught me to believe.
“I suggest a temporal distinction. Prior to the murder of Derek Billings, Samael believed himself to be an angel, and his involvement in the murders had an organized quality. Afterward, he believed himself to be a madman, and his murders – specifically the killing of Derek Billings – became psychotic.”
I was mad to believe I could be human.
“So, what does the Son of Samael believe himself to be now? Interestingly, his first post-escape civilian victim was a priest, whom he shot but did not dismember. In fact, the lethal wound on the priest’s abdomen had been inexpertly bandaged. A cashier at a gas station nearby, who said she spoke to the Son of Samael the night before and the day after the priest’s death, said he wanted everyone to know he was polite to her, paid his money, and did not threaten. He said, ‘Tell them what I was like. Tell them what I was.’
“Here lies another transformation. Having at last been convinced of his humanity, the Son of Samael acts according to it. He tries to kill himself when he believes I am dead, then kills only to escape paramedics and police, then shoots a priest who is about to summon police, but feeling bad about it, tries to save the man’s life. The priest’s death is the final indicator to the Son of Samael that he can never live as a decent human, that he will be hunted all his life, and when caught in a situation that requires him to kill, he will kill.”
Oh, Donna, even now, you know me so well. I wish we could go back. I wish I could turn time backward as once I could.
“But the final transformation, the stressor that preceded this latest rash of killings, was the announcement of the falsehood of the Son of Samael’s human past. Here is a man who, after much browbeating, was at last convinced that he was human, and had the name William B. Dance, and had a very specific past filled with horrific tortures. Now he is told that that very past is a lie. All he is left with is his belief in an angelic origin, and his knowledge that he cannot regain his lost divinity. With the death of the priest, he could not even retain his humanity. So, what sort of creature is he now? What kind of being kills humans with impunity?
“Fallen angels. Fiends. Demons. At the tattoo parlor, there was a drawing that none of the workers had seen before, an ornately patterned mask. The Des Plaines police recently learned the face is a ritual mask of Shaytan, the Arabic name for Satan.”
Very good, my angel. Very good.
“Do you see? He thinks he has fallen from the heavens here to Earth for a short while, and descended farther than that to an abode in Hell. He is rejected by God and man. He is alone in torment, and desires only to strike out of the black heart of Hell to terrorize those with the smug fortune of living above.”
You know me so well. If I cannot have you as a companion, I will be content to have you as an adversary.