He walked back through to the living room to read through Toni Morello's transcript again, and to finish his coffee. As he did so, the long net curtains along the window appeared to ripple, as if they had been stirred by an early-morning breeze. The strange thing was, though, that all of the windows were closed.
270
He stared at the curtains for a while, but they didn't move again. For some reason he had the distinct feeling that he wasn't alone, that there was somebody else in his apartment, hiding. He didn't know why. He put down his coffee mug and went across to the kitchen. Nobody there. The front door was still locked and chained, although he knew from the way in which Cathy had manifested herself that spirits weren't deterred by walls or locked doors.
He took down his shoulder holster from the hat stand and buckled it on. Then he crossed the living room and went back into the bedroom.
"Anybody there?"
This was insane. Yet Jerry Maitland must have thought that he was insane, too, when his arms started to bleed all down his new wallpaper, and when his pregnant wife was stabbed and her head cut off in front of his eyes. And Major Drewry must have thought he had lost his reason, when he was gutted in the shower. And John Mason, too, when he was blinded and boiled.
There was somebody here, or some thing. Some deeply malevolent force, a force that wanted to do him serious harm. It had warned him right from the very beginning, on Alison Maitland's 911 call, and it had warned him in his dreams. It wasn't quite ready to take him yet, but time was hurrying away and it was very close.
He listened and listened but he couldn't hear anything. But that was what disturbed him so much. The interior of his apartment was utterly silent. No traffic from 1-95; no steamboats hooting; no airplanes flying overhead from Richmond International. He felt as if the entire apartment had been swaddled in thick insulation, or his ears had been packed with cotton.
He took one step across the room, and then another. He stopped and turned around. For an instant, out of the corner
271
of his eye, he thought he glimpsed a shadow flitting across his bedroom mirror, but inside it, as if it were another room.
He hefted out his gun and approached the mirror very slowly. He reached out and touched the glass with his fingertips. The man in the mirror stared back at him as if he had lost his way and didn't know where to turn next.
Hicks had his feet propped up on his desk and his mouth was full of apple donut.
"Oh, hi, Lieutenant. The captain was looking for you."
Decker went to his desk and quickly rifled through his memos and notes and letters. He sniffed and said, "Any idea what he wanted?"
"Uh-huh. But if you want to know what kind of a mood he was in, I would say 'warpath' just about sums it up."
Oh, God, thought Decker, don't say that Maggie has had a fit of conscience, and confessed everything. If Cab had found out about that, he wouldn't have to worry about Chang& His last day on earth would be over before lunch.
"By the way," Hicks added. "I found out all about this Saint James Intercisus dude."
"Oh yeah?"
"Oh yeah . . . and if that's what's going to happen to you, well, if I were in your shoes I'd be booking myself a plane ticket to some place very, very, very far away."
"Go on."
Hicks produced a printout from the Catholic Patron Saints Web site. "Says here that Saint James Intercisus was a military adviser and a courtier to King Yezdigerd the First of Persia, back in the fifth century. Seems like he was converted to Christianity, but he made the mistake of confessing his conversion to King Yezdigerd's successor, King Bahram. Apparently King Bahram really liked him, and didn't want to do nothing to hurt him, but, you know, he
272
couldn't have people worshiping God when they were supposed to be worshiping him. King Bahram asked Saint James to give up on God, but when he wouldn't, he ordered him hung up from a wooden frame and subjected to the Nine Deaths."
"The Nine Deaths? Not too sure I like the sound of that."
"It means chopping bits off of you, one at a time, until you say uncle. First of all they cut off Saint James's fingers and thumbs, that was the First Death, but all he said was, `Lord, I may not have any fingers to write my prayers, but I still worship you.' Then they cut off his toes, the Second Death, but he still wouldn't renounce God.
"The Third and Fourth Deaths meant cutting off his hands and the Fifth and Sixth Deaths meant cutting off his feet, but he still refused to deny God. They cut off his ears, the Seventh Death, and then they cut off his nose.
"He was given one last chance to recant, but all he said was, 'I am like a ruined house, but God still lives in me.' So that didn't leave King Bahram a whole lot of choice. He ordered his guards to whop Saint James's head off.
"All in all, they cut him into twenty-eight separate pieces, which is why they call him Intercisus, which I guess is Latin for 'cut up into twenty-eight separate pieces."
Decker sat staring at Hicks for a long time with his mouth open. Then he said, "Hicks, I think you just seriously spoiled my day."
"Only telling you what it says on the Web site, Lieutenant. By the way, Saint James Intercisus is the patron saint of torture victims and also of lost vocations."
"Lost vocations? That's me all right. I always wanted to be a country-and-western singer."
Cab's door was open but Decker knocked on it just the same. Cab was on the phone and he pointed to the chair
273
on the other side of his desk. When he had finished talking he took out his handkerchief and loudly trumpeted his nose.
"I've had a complaint," he said.
"Sorry to hear it. Sounds like you still do."
"I don't mean that kind of a complaint, I mean I've had a complaint about the way that you're investigating these homicides. Ms. Honey Blackwell from the city council says your homicide team has been unjustifiably discriminating against people of color, especially those of the Santeria religion. These santeros, they're very sensitive people. They don't like being rousted."
Decker lifted both hands in a gesture of innocence. "Captain—I'm not discriminating against anybody. I just happen to have a strong suspicion that the motive for all of these homicides is linked to Santeria."
"Junior Abraham's okay. But the other victims were four white middle-class people. What makes you think that they could have any connection at all with Santeria? Where's your evidence?"
"Ah. Well, it's only circumstantial, at the moment. More theoretical, really, than circumstantial."
"All right, then, tell me what your theoretical evidence is, so that I can get Ms. Blackwell off my tail."
"If it's all the same to you, I'd really like to wait until I can firm things up a little."
"Decker, I'm your superior officer and as such I am ultimately responsible for the progress of this investigation, which so far seems to be achieving nothing whatsoever, except to cause major irritation to the Afro-American community, whose trust and confidence it has taken me the best part of seven years to build up."