I was on my way to my sister's house in Manayunk, Patrick had said, not twenty feet from Bethany Price's still-warm body.
She checked the weapon's magazine. It was full.
His doctor came to see him yesterday, Agnes Pinsky had said.
She slammed the magazine home, chambered a round. And began to descend the stairs.
The wind continued to bay outside, trembling the windowpanes in their cracked glazing.
'Patrick?'
No response.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, padded across the living room, opened the drawer in the hutch, grabbed the old flashlight. She pushed the switch. Dead. Of course. Thanks, Vincent.
She closed the drawer.
Louder: 'Patrick?'
Silence.
This was getting out of control really fast. She wasn't going into the cellar without light. No way.
She backed her way to the stairs, then made her way up as silently as she could. She would take Sophie and some blankets, bundle her up to the attic, and lock the door. Sophie would be miserable, but she would be safe. Jessica knew she had to get control of herself, and the situation. She would lock Sophie in, get to her cell phone, and call for backup.
'It's okay, sweetie,' she said. 'It's okay.'
She picked up Sophie, held her tight. Sophie shivered. Her teeth chattered.
In the flickering candlelight, Jessica thought she was seeing things. She had to be mistaken. She picked up a candle, held it close.
She wasn't mistaken. There, on Sophie's forehead, was a cross made of blue chalk.
The killer wasn't in the house.
The killer was in the room.
71
FRIDAY, 9:2 5 PM
Byrne pulled off Roosevelt Boulevard. The street was flooded. His head pounded, the images came roaring through, one after the other: a demented slaughterhouse of a slide show. The killer was stalking Jessica and her daughter. Byrne had looked at the lottery ticket the killer had put in Kristi Hamilton's hands and not seen it at first. None of them had. When the lab uncovered the number, it became clear. The clue was not the lottery agent. The clue was the number. The lab had determined that the Big 4 number the killer had chosen was 9-7-0-0. The address of St. Katherine Church rectory was 9700 Frankford Avenue. Jessica had been close. The Rosary Killer had defaced the door at St. Katherine three years ago and had fully intended to end his madness there tonight. He intended to take Lauren Semanski to the church and fulfill the final of the five Sorrowful Mysteries on the altar there.
The crucifixion.
That Lauren had fought back and escaped only delayed him. When Byrne had touched the broken ballpoint pen in Lauren's hand, he knew where the killer was ultimately headed, and who would be his final victim. He had immediately called the Eighth District, which had dispatched a half a dozen officers to the church and a pair of patrol cars to Jessica's house.
Byrne's only hope was that they were not too late.
The streetlights were out, as were the traffic lights. Accordingly, as always when things like this happened, everyone in Philly forgot how to drive. Byrne took out his cell phone and called Jessica again. He got a busy signal. He tried her cell phone. It rang five times, then switched over to her voice mail.
Come on, Jess.
He pulled over to the side of the road, closed his eyes. To anyone who had never experienced the exacting pain of a rampant migraine, there could be no explanation rich enough. The lights of the oncoming cars seared his eyes. Between the flashes, he saw the bodies. Not the chalk outlines of the crime scene after the sanitization of investigation, but rather the human beings.
Tessa Wells having her arms and legs positioned around the pillar.
Nicole Taylor being laid to rest in the field of bright flowers.
Bethany Price and her crown of razors.
Kristi Hamilton soaked with blood.
Their eyes were open, questioning, pleading.
Pleading with him.
The fifth body was not clear to him at all, but he knew enough to shake him to the bottom of his soul.
The fifth body was just a little girl.
72
FRIDAY, 9:35 PM
Jessica slammed shut the bedroom door. Locked it. She had to begin with the immediate area. She searched beneath the bed, behind the curtains, in the closet, her weapon out front.
Empty.
Somehow Patrick had gotten upstairs and made the sign of the cross on Sophie's forehead. She had tried to ask Sophie a gentle question about it, but her little girl seemed traumatized.
The idea made Jessica as sick as it did enraged. But at the moment, rage was her enemy. Her life was under siege.
She sat back down on the bed.
'You have to listen to Mommy, okay?'
Sophie stared, as if she was in shock.
'Sweetie? Listen to Mommy.'
Silence from her daughter.
'Mommy is going to make up a bed in the closet, okay? Like camping. Okay?'
Sophie had no reaction.
Jessica scrambled over to the closet. She pushed everything to the back, yanked the bedclothes off the bed, and created a makeshift bed. It broke her heart to have to do this, but she had no choice. She pulled everything else out of the closet and tossed it on the floor, everything that might cause Sophie harm. She lifted her daughter out of the bed, fighting her own tears of fury and terror.
She kissed Sophie, then closed the closet door. She turned the church key, pocketed it. She grabbed her weapon, and exited the room.
All the candles she had lighted in the house were blown out. The wind howled outside, but in the house it was deathly quiet. It was an intoxicating dark, a dark that seemed to consume everything it touched. Jessica saw everything she knew to be there in her mind, not with her eyes. As she moved down the stairs, she considered the layout of the living room. The table, the chairs, the hutch, the armoire that held the TV and the audio and video equipment, the love seats. It was all so familiar and all so foreign at the same moment. Each shadow held a monster; each outline, a threat.
She had qualified at the range every year she had been a cop, had taken the tactical, live-fire training course. But it was never supposed to be her house, her refuge from the insane world outside. This was the place where her little girl played. Now it had become a battleground.
When she touched the last step, she realized what she was doing. She was leaving Sophie alone upstairs.
