Ten minutes later, he pulled into a gas station and made a call. His face was still set hard when he got back into the pickup. Then his nostrils flared.
‘What is that stink?’ he said, searching under the dashboard. He found a small package loosely wrapped in silver foil and opened it. The smell immediately got worse. ‘For the love of Lucifer.’
Heinz Rothmann looked at the shriveled heart. He had added a commandment to the Antigospel, requiring the faithful to keep the vital organs of their deceased loved ones. The owner of the truck had obviously been obedient. He was gratified to see that Apollyon looked physically ill. Obviously, he wouldn’t be going back to remove his sister’s heart.
‘They’ve stopped,’ Sara said, taking her foot off the gas. ‘Just over two miles ahead, outside a place called Caluga.’ She pulled up and reached toward the backseat.
I had visions of her preparing for battle. ‘What are you doing?’
She laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I need to educate myself before I take further action. Let’s see what’s in Abaddon’s rucksack.’
I watched as she removed the contents. There wasn’t much-a combat knife, some ammunition clips and a laptop.
‘Bingo,’ Sara said, opening the computer and turning it on. After a few moments, her fingers started moving rapidly over the keys. ‘I’m in.’
I was impressed. ‘The last time I saw you with a laptop, you knew even less than I did.’
Her eyes stayed on the screen. ‘A lot of things have changed since then.’ She looked up. ‘Including my appearance. What do you think?’ She moved her head like a film star advertising shampoo.
‘Em, fine.’ I was trying to remember what she had looked like when I loved her, but that had gone into the void.
‘Fine?’ she said, in annoyance. ‘The surgery cost me fifty thousand dollars.’
‘It was worth it,’ I said, not wanting to incite her to further violence. I didn’t tell her that her gait had given her away.
‘Like the twenty grand I spent on technology skills was worth it.’ She gave me a dead-eyed stare through what I presumed were contact lenses-her eyes weren’t blue when we were together. ‘Okay, the woman who called herself Abaddon knew what she was doing. There are no obvious files and no favorites on her internet program.’
‘How about email?’
Sara gave me another hollow stare. ‘Oh, thanks for reminding me.’ Her fingers flew about. ‘Completely empty. Either she didn’t use it or she deleted all her messages.’
‘In which case, they’ll be in the hard drive.’
‘Yeah, but there isn’t time to access that now.’
I suppressed a smile. ‘Did you take voice coaching from a New Yorker?’
She ignored that. After several more minutes, her fingers stopped moving.
‘Shit,’ she said, chewing her bottom lip. I remembered her doing that when she had a deadline from her editor on the newspaper. Our evenings together had often been interrupted by urgent stories and updates. We often ended up having wild sex after she filed. That was an unwelcome recollection. Why was it more lucid than visions of Karen?
‘Wait a minute.’
I watched as her fingers hit the keys again.
‘Bastard,’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘The fucking snake.’ She sat back, her face suddenly damp with sweat.
‘What is it?’ Talking to her was painful, but necessary. The only way I was going to survive was by softening her attitude toward me. Pretending to care about what she was going through was one way of achieving that. I imagined the ones I had lost covering their eyes and shunning me.
‘My fucking broker, Havi,’ Sara said. ‘Abaddon had his email address buried in a maintenance file.’
‘What does that mean?’
She gave me a stare that was marginally less empty. ‘It means he was screwing with me.’
‘Playing you off against Abaddon?’
‘Maybe. I’ve been picking up rumors that I was the so-called Hitler’s Hitman. You hear about those murders?’
‘Greenwich Village, Michigan, Boston and Philadelphia,’ I said, trying not to sound too much like a Rothmann-conditioned robot.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re very well informed.’
‘What do you expect? The FBI reckoned that Rothmann was behind them and I was their main link to him.’
She laughed emptily. ‘But, of course, Rothmann had nothing to do with the killings.’
For a moment I thought she really was the murderer-messing with me had been her modus operandi since she’d gone on the run after the White Devil’s death. Then I saw the anger on her face.
‘That piece of shit,’ she said, spittle flying. ‘I think Abaddon did those murders and Havi set up the deal. Since then, he’s been trying to pin them on me.’
‘Why?’
She looked at me as if I were a small child. ‘Jesus, Matt, use your novelist’s imagination. If you were my broker, would you get a nice warm feeling every time I got in touch?’
She was right there. No doubt she was brilliant at her work, but she was a naked flame that attracted insects and then burned them up-I had personal experience of that. I could imagine this Havi guy might have thought he’d live longer working for other principals.
‘Then again,’ I said, rubbing my wrists together to restore the circulation, ‘if Abaddon killed those people, she was even worse than-’ I broke off.
‘Even worse than me? Oh, Matt, say it ain’t so.’
I remembered what she’d done to my friend Dave Cummings. She had also almost killed my mother, my ex-wife and my daughter Lucy, as well as numerous others. No matter how bad Abaddon had been, she could never have matched my ex-lover.
‘Don’t worry, Matt, you might still be saved. Abaddon’s brother Apollyon has got an even worse reputation for savagery. Maybe he’ll get me before I get him.’
I didn’t find that very comforting. Apollyon was hardly likely to let me go with a pat on the back if he disposed of the Soul Collector. Besides, there was another factor.
‘What about Rothmann, Sara? You’ve been contracted to kill him. Doesn’t he take priority over Apollyon?’
She gave me a dark look. ‘That deal was fixed by the scumbag Havi.’ She raised a finger. ‘Wait. If he’s transferred my share of the advance, he’s in the clear.’
I watched as she tapped away. Even though we were in what seemed to be an underpopulated part of Texas, the laptop’s wireless connection was good. No doubt Abaddon had earned enough to buy the best technology.
Sara scowled. ‘The fucking bastard. Not only has he not sent anything for the Rothmann job, but he hasn’t paid the balance on my last contract.’
‘Whose death did that involve?’ I asked, hoping she might come clean without thinking.
‘Good try, Matt. Do I look like I’ve lost it completely?’
I was thinking about the hit-and-run incident in Florida, the one that had killed Gordy Lister’s brother. If she had been hired to kill Rothmann, it wasn’t unlikely that the same employer would have wanted to put Rothmann’s number two under pressure. But who was that employer?
‘They’re on the road again,’ Sara said, shutting down the laptop.
The flashing cross on the monitor had started to move.
I watched this former lover of mine as she drove on. I was thinking about the question she had asked-‘Do I look like I’ve lost it completely?’ Until she’d said that, I hadn’t thought anything of the sort. But now I had begun to wonder about the sweat on her face and the tension around her eyes. Could it be that the invincible Soul Collector was finally beginning to come apart at the seams?
‘I wish to see my lawyer immediately.’
Peter Sebastian was sitting across the table in the interview room from Sir Andrew Frogget, Arthur Bimsdale by his side. He looked down at the photographs that had been taken on their entry to the apartment in Adams-Morgan.
‘I’ve already outlined the law pertaining to sexual acts with minors,’ Sebastian said. ‘Would you like me to send these photographs to your lawyer?’