Spotty’s throat swallowed beneath the rigid rope.
Kells said, “Most people choose the nose first. Smell is the most undervalued sense. Rarely has anyone progressed beyond sight.”
Spotty tried to shake his head and was choked for the effort. He was tearing up again, not from fear but from the mace and the rope tension and his clumsiness in getting caught. He thrust his chin upward as best he could, straining against the cord, as though to say, Ready.
Kells studied him, waggling the knife in his hand. After a long moment, he backed off.
“Good soldier,” Kells said. “I believe you will maintain your loyalty to Trait right to the end. Pride is all you have. I won’t break your loyalty with pain.”
He moved back onto the altar. Spotty watched him disappear behind the backdrop. They had to kill him. Stalling was Spotty’s only chance, until a patrol noticed the dogs’ silence and investigated.
He heard steps, numerous and confused, growing louder in the rear of the church. He smelled the German shepherd before he saw it. Kells came around from the sacristy holding one of the guard dogs by the collar.
She was nosing his leg and trying to jump up on him. Spotty’s eyes burned at her playfulness.
The dog scented Spotty and stiffened. It lurched toward him, testing Kells’s grip on her collar, a snarl strangled in her throat. She crouched on the crimson-red rug, growling menacingly at Spotty.
“You said these were your dogs,” Kells said.
He patted her dark, silky coat, touching her in a way Spotty never could. The dog’s eyes never left Spotty’s, even as she dipped her head toward Kells, begging his hand.
Kells smiled. “Good girl,” he said. “Trusting sort. They know cons from civilians.”
Spotty swallowed his distress. The dog was so eager for affection, so immediately loyal.
As Kells held the collar with his left hand, the hunting knife reappeared in his right.
“I want you to tell me about the security arrangements here in town.”
Spotty foolishly tested the rope again and paid the price. It scored the broad base of his neck, choking him as the dog’s collar choked her.
Tom Duggan spoke. “Not on the altar,” he said.
But Kells ignored him, stroking the dog’s belly with the knife hand now. The dog lay contentedly and vulnerably on her side, still glaring at Spotty. Kells’s stroke worked its way up to her throat.
Kells said, “Start with the police station.”
Spotty tried to lift his feet. He tried to will himself out of the strangling chair.
The dog wriggled under Kells’s hand, nuzzling the rug. Spotty saw the rebel’s eyes darken as sometimes Luther’s would.
Kells’s hands moved quickly. The knife went swish-swish and up he stood.
The dog let out a half-yelp and rolled onto its legs, standing and stepping forward before slumping, blood gushing from her throat. She pushed forward on hind paws, crawling, then gave up, rolling off the altar step and bleeding out at Spotty’s feet.
Spotty was choking. He could not breathe. The throbbing in his head reminded him of beatings from parents whose love he was refused.
Blood ran down the altar steps. Kells’s voice came to him as though on a crazy breeze. “Nine more. Only you can spare them.”
The stink of the opened dog. Spotty choked out two words, a gasp. “You Clock?”
Kells looked down at him from the altar. He nodded once.
Spotty felt a flicker of relief. If he was going to be broken, at least he was going to be broken by the best.
Tom Duggan moved toward the altar, crawling with anxiety and repulsion. Kells had gone too far, and they had been there too long. Three dog carcasses lay around the altar. The hulking prisoner was slumped in the pastor’s chair, head down, wheezing.
“We need to go,” Tom Duggan said. “Someone’s going to come.”
There was blood on Kells’s hands and a few flecks on his coat sleeves but none on his boots. He said, “We can’t leave him here.”
In his distress, Tom Duggan thought Kells was proposing that they take the con back with them. “What do you mean?”
“We can’t let him tell the cons what we know.”
He understood then. “But if they find him dead, won’t they know we did it? Won’t they assume we know everything anyway?”
Kells’s expression blanked as though he were looking at something terrible but inevitable. “You wait here,” he said.
He pulled out his taser and hit the con with a paralyzing charge. He sliced the ropes with his knife and the prisoner fell hard, flopping to the floor near one of the dogs. He twitched there, immobilized.
Kells replaced the pastor’s chair on the altar and dropped his knife on the rug. He returned the rope and the launcher to the sacristy cloakroom, then started down the old planks underneath the trapdoor.
Tom Duggan regarded the prisoner, oafish and shivering like some great beast stranded outside its natural habitat. “You should never have escaped,” Tom Duggan said.
The man’s eyes were more sad than fierce. He heard the paws running up behind the altar and his vision rolled to the backdrop.
The rest of the guard dogs came trotting into the sacristy before scenting Tom Duggan, bounding out to him, their cold bodies dancing around his legs.
He remained very still.
First one let out a low, feral growl and then the rest turned. Their coats grew prickly, teeth flashing white. The prisoner’s eyes were tragic as the dogs broke for him: a many-mouthed beast, roaring.
Chapter 25
The mania-fright of impending rape and murder was not a wild, electric feeling. It was more like bugs and fungus of immense weight, creeping over Rebecca’s skin to her mouth and nose, slowly suffocating her.
Kells and Tom Duggan returned an hour too late for Polk. Tom Duggan lifted his mother’s unfinished afghan off Polk’s face. His manner was studied and formal, and he replaced the shroud with great care.
Polk’s body was bundled in flowery bedsheets and carried out to the side yard and laid next to Tom Duggan’s mother. With shovels and gloved hands they buried him in the preserving snow. Tom Duggan said a few words at the end. He was a true revolutionary. He was willing to tear down his world rather than see it compromised.
The rest stood with head bowed, except for Rebecca, who never took her eyes off the woods.
Inside, they shed coats and gloves in the hallway and regrouped in the parlor.
“We know the other two towns,” announced Tom Duggan, Kells standing behind him. “We got the information from one of the prisoners.”
Rebecca reached for the easy chair and sat in it. She was reluctant at first to give in to elation. Any dashed hope would crush her now.
Dr. Rosen stammered. “How do you know it’s true?”
“The zip codes of the two towns correspond to Luther Trait’s ten-digit inmate number. That’s how he selected them. The first five digits are the zip code of the first town, the second five are the second.”
This was typical of Trait, a backward stab at the technocracy that had imprisoned him.
Rebecca said, “Then it’s over?”
“That part of it,” said Tom Duggan.
Dr. Rosen blinked as though waking from sleep. Coe’s graveside tears were gone. Mia’s hand gripped her sweater over her belly.
It was over. Just like that Grue and Trait and everything.
“What other part is there?” asked Rebecca, looking at Kells. “We just wait to be rescued now. You’ll call your agency, and they’ll end this.”