Standing over him, she put her hand on his shoulder. "I guess that also explains the other thing I didn't understand."
"The jar in the glove box," he guessed.
"Yeah. I'm assuming he put it there while you were packing your bags to go back to college."
"He must've cut out her eyes earlier in the day, kept them as a memento, for God's sake. I'm sure he thought it would be funny to put them in my car and let me find them later. Test the strength of our bond."
"After he'd convinced you he was innocent, persuaded you to let him dispose of the body, he was crazy ever to let you see the eyes — let alone give them to you."
"He couldn't resist the thrill. The danger. Walking that thin line along the edge of disaster. And you see — he pulled it off again. He got away with it. I let him win."
"He acts like he thinks he's blessed."
"Maybe he is," Joey said.
"By what god?"
"There's no god involved."
Celeste stepped past him onto the altar platform, moved to the far side of the dead woman, pocketed the screwdriver and flashlight, and knelt. Facing him across the body, she said, "We have to look at her face."
Joey grimaced. "Why?"
"P.J. didn't tell you her name, but he said she's from here in Coal Valley. I probably know her."
"That'll make it even harder on you."
"There's no choice but to look, Joey," she persisted. "If we know who she is, we might have a clue about what he's up to, where he's gone."
They found it necessary to roll the body on its side to pull free a loose end of the plastic tarp. They eased the dead woman onto her back again before uncovering her face.
A thick fall of blood-spotted blond hair mercifully veiled her ravaged features.
With one hand Celeste carefully pushed the hair aside with a tenderness that Joey found deeply touching. Simultaneously, with her other hand, she crossed herself and said, "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen."
Joey tilted his head back and stared at the sanctuary ceiling, not because he hoped to get a glimpse of the Trinity, whose names she had intoned, but because he couldn't bear to look into the empty sockets.
"There's a gag in her mouth," Celeste told him. "One of those things you wash a car with — chamois. I think… yes, her ankles are tied with wire. She wasn't running from any crazed mountain man."
Joey shuddered.
"Her name's Beverly Korshak," Celeste said. "She was a few years older than me. A nice girl. Friendly. She still lived with her folks, but they sold out to the government here and moved into a house in Asherville last month. Beverly had a secretarial job there, at the electric-company office. Her folks are good friends with my folks. Known them a long, long time. Phil and Sylvie Korshak. This is going to be hard on them, real hard."
Joey still stared at the ceiling. "P.J. must've seen her in Asherville earlier today. Stopped to chat her up. She wouldn't have hesitated to get in the car with apparently."
"Let's cover her," Celeste said.
"You do it."
He wasn't squeamish about what her eyeless face might look like. He was afraid, instead, that in her empty sockets he would somehow be able to see her blue eyes, still intact, as they had been in the last moments of her terrible agony, when she had screamed for help through the wadded rag in her mouth and had known that no savior would answer her pleas.
The plastic rustled.
"You amaze me," he said.
"Why?"
"Your strength."
"I'm here to help you, that's all."
"I thought I was here to help you."
"Maybe it's both ways."
The rustling stopped.
"Okay," Celeste assured him.
He lowered his head and saw what he first thought was blood on the floor of the altar platform. It had been revealed when they shifted the position of the corpse.
On second look, however, Joey realized that it was not blood but paint from a spray can. Someone had written the number 1 and drawn a circle around it.
"You see this?" he asked Celeste, as she rose to her feet on the other side of the dead woman.
"Yeah. Something to do with the demolition plans."
"I don't think so."
"Sure. Must be. Or maybe just kids vandalizing the place. They painted more of them back there," she said, gesturing in the general direction of the nave.
He got up, turned, and frowned at the dimly lighted church. "Where?"
"The first row of pews," she said.
Against the dark wood backs of the benches, the red paint was difficult to read from a distance.
After picking up the crowbar, Joey swung his legs over the presbytery balustrade, dropped into the three-sided choir enclosure, and went to the sanctuary railing.
He heard Celeste following him, but by way of the ambulatory.
On the front pew to the left of the center aisle, a series of sequential numbers, circled in red, had been painted side by side. They were spaced approximately as people would have been if any had been sitting there. Farthest to the left was the number 2, and the last number, nearest the center aisle, was 6.
Joey felt as though spiders were crawling on the back of his neck, but his hand found none there.
On the pew to the right of the center aisle, the red numbers continued in sequence—7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12—to the far side of the church.
"Twelve," he brooded.
Joining him at the sanctuary railing, Celeste said softly, "What's wrong?"
"The woman on the altar…"
"Beverly."
He stared intently at the red numbers on the pews, which now seemed as radiant as signs of the Apocalypse.
"Joey? What about her? What is it?"
Joey was still puzzling it out, standing in the shadow of truth but not quite able to see the whole icy structure of it. "He painted the number one and then put her on top of it."
"P.J. did?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
A hard blast of wind battered the old church, and a draft swept through the nave. The faintly lingering scent of stale incense and the stronger smell of mildew were swept away, and the draft brought with it the stink of sulfur.
Joey said, "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
Clearly puzzled by the question, she shook her head. "No."
"Does anyone else live with you and your folks, like maybe a grandparent, anyone?"
"No. Just the three of us."
"Beverly's one of twelve."
"Twelve what?"
He pointed at Celeste, and his hand shook. "Then your family — two, three, four. Who else still lives in Coal Valley?"
"The Dolans."
"How many of them?"
"Five in their family."
"Who else?"
"John and Beth Bimmer. John's mother, Hannah, lives with them."
"Three. Three Bimmers, five Dolans, plus you and your folks. Eleven. Plus her, there on the altar." With a sweep of his hand, he indicated the numbers on the pews. "Twelve."
"Oh, God."
"I don't need any psychic flash to see where he's going with this one. The number twelve must appeal to him for the obvious reason. Twelve apostles, all dead and lined up in a deconsecrated church. All of them paying silent homage not to God but to the thirteenth apostle. That's how P.J. sees himself, I think — as the thirteenth apostle, Judas. The Betrayer."
Still holding the crowbar, he pushed open the sacristy gate and returned to the nave.
He touched one of the numbers on the left-hand pew. In places, the paint was still tacky.
"Judas. Betraying his family," Joey said, "betraying the faith he was raised in, with reverence for nothing, loyal to nothing, to no one. Fearing nothing, not even God. Walking the most dangerous line of them all, taking the biggest imaginable risk to get the greatest of all thrills: risking his soul for a… for a dance along the edge of damnation."