Trait said, “The rebels! Where are they?”
“I don’t know. The dogs came at us out of the church.”
Trait saw the open church doors past the CNN van.
Trait looked for a familiar hulking figure as the cons began emerging from their hiding places.
“Where’s Spotty?” he said.
The ex-con was holding his wrist, his hand bloodied from a dog bite.
Trait started for the church. His fury increased with his speed. Spotty and his fucking dogs. Trait passed the con at the cemetery fence, his coat in rags, two gutted dogs whimpering at his feet.
Trait rushed inside the church. Two more dogs stood on the altar, turning and running at him. Trait dropped both of them in the center aisle as he advanced to the front pews.
He saw Spotty twisted on the altar steps. Trait slowed and reached for the back of the first pew before going to him. He rolled the big man over.
Spotty was dead. The dogs had been eating him.
Trait sat down on the first step. He looked out at the empty church, the rifle resting across his lap. Trait felt something leave him then.
Trait turned back to the altar in a daze. He saw the dog carcasses. He saw the bloody knife on the rug. Spotty had fought them off.
Immediately something wasn’t right. Trait resisted his hunch. He didn’t like where it was taking him.
He had never seen Spotty use a knife. Spotty’s trusted Micro Uzi was nowhere to be seen.
Then he noticed the blood on the armrests of the celebrant’s chair.
Others were coming in the doors now. It was instinct that kept Trait from telegraphing his concerns to the approaching cons.
He went behind the altar to the wide closet there. The rocket launcher lay under the choir robes, just as they had left it. If the rebels had gotten to Spotty, wouldn’t they have found the launcher?
He returned to the altar. The cons were coming to the front rows near Spotty’s body, sitting down. The Marielitos entered but remained at the far end of the center aisle. Their clannish impudence angered Trait now. Like Spotty, he had saved them from slaughter when he didn’t have to. He had delivered them from ADX Gilchrist, asking only loyalty in return.
The thing that had driven them apart, the threat of Clock and the rebels, was now the only thing holding them together.
Inkman slipped inside the front door in his hooded coat, the ruckus having drawn him out of wherever he was hiding. He came down the left side of the church, steering clear of the Marielitos.
Some were looking at Trait now. Maybe they wanted words from him. Maybe they wanted an explanation. Maybe they wanted him to rally them to battle.
Of all of them, Spotty should have been the last man standing. His sudden death took something out of the rest.
Trait’s voice was dead. “Get back to your posts.”
Hard, tired stares. Trait moved into the center aisle. The Marielitos stood between the last rows, and Trait came up against them. He met the leader’s smug, shiny eyes.
One of the others moved slightly to let him through. There were no words, nothing.
He stopped on the bottom step outside even as the cons pushed past him. Daylight was dying in the sky.
Something else wasn’t right in the common. He faced the news van they had brought back from the prison. It was parked across the street from the church doors, yet no one had come out of it during the shooting.
Trait went inside alone. He showed no reaction when he saw the coatless ex-con slumped dead on the floor. The tangle of cut wires concerned him more, but again his instinct was to do nothing — not out of respect for Spotty this time, but out of disdain for Inkman, for the Marielitos, and all the rest.
He set the inside lock before stepping back outside and closing the van door.
Inkman was waiting for him in the snow. There was concern on his face, and fear, and still a bit of the condescension in his manner that Trait had come to despise.
“Did Spotty know?” said Inkman.
Trait stared hard. Doing the weak man then and there would have been like admitting he was right. The Marielitos lurked inside the church, almost within listening range.
“Did Spotty know about the zip codes?” Inkman said.
Trait grabbed the soft fabric over Inkman’s shoulder. Inkman tried to pull away in surprise. Trait could feel him shivering through his coat.
“You stay with me now,” said Trait. Inkman tried to twist away as Trait muscled him across the common toward the police station. “I don’t want you out of my sight again.”
Chapter 27
Rebecca once dreamed there was a killer loose on west 95th Street.
She was home writing when detectives from the 24th Precinct buzzed. She answered all their questions while drawing them out as to the particulars of the crimes. As they rose to leave, one of the detectives noticed a copy of Sexual Homicides: Pattern and Motives on her bookshelf. He asked her about it. His partner scanned a few manuscript pages, then proceeded to her office. Rebecca followed, explaining to them who she was, but they would not allow her past the door. Inside her file cabinet they found newspaper clippings following their case. They pulled down books from her shelves: Bite Mark Protocol, Bloodstain Pattern Interpretation, Suspect Interview and Interrogation. There were police texts on evidence gathering, forensics, suspect profiling, sexual deviance. Detailed notes on knife wounds, ligature marks, tire impressions, and the amount of time the human body takes to decompose.
These were reference tools, she told them. She was Rebecca Loden, the author. She went through her apartment searching for a copy of Last Words but failed to find one. Even her framed dust jacket, with her photograph on the back cover — hands folded behind an elegant writing desk, radiating confidence, auburn hair shining — was missing from the wall. One detective recited her Miranda rights as the other clasped his handcuffs around her wrists.
She remembered the dream now as she stood at Mrs. Duggan’s kitchen window, watching the daylight bleed out of the Vermont sky. Her books were her alibis. Who else but a psychopath has such interests?
The snow was falling gently now, finally tapering off. Everything was ending, it seemed. Just not soon enough.
They heard the sled engine again. It varied, ranging from a growl to a distant purr. When the wind changed, she smelled smoke.
The house-burning cons were circling closer. She was anxious for dusk. The glow of the flames would give her some idea of how close they were. From the upstairs windows, she had seen black smoke in the distance through the fading snow.
Be patient, she told herself. She wanted so badly for this all to be over. All you have to do now is wait.
She turned from the window to Coe and Mia. Mia sat on a chair near the oven with her hands folded between her thighs to keep them from trembling. Coe was rocking back and forth as though trying to stay warm.
“We’ll be out of here by morning,” Rebecca said, hoping to reassure them all.
The telephone rang and Mia jumped to her feet. Rebecca tried to ignore it. Coe looked at Rebecca as though she had done something terrible.
There was no answering machine, and each ring pealed through the house like a scream.
“Don’t answer it,” said Mia, both an admonition and a plea.
But the phone kept ringing. He knew she was there.
“He’ll come if I don’t,” Rebecca decided. “I can stall him,” she said, and went to the wall phone.
She gave it one more chance to stop ringing before she lifted the receiver.