voice. “I’m almost sorry that it has come to this, Cassandra. I had other ideas. You are the daughter of a champion of justice, and for his sake, I wanted more for you.”
I was trying to think of how he had decided that I was the daughter of a champion of justice, when he solved it for me. “Oh, I know you weren’t his daughter by birth, but you might as well have been, you know. Your tributes to him — the articles you wrote about him after he was murdered — it was clear to me that no one else loved him as you did. I so appreciated it when you avenged Mr. O’Connor’s death. You really are Irene O’Connor in some ways. That’s why I thought you’d understand.”
“What was O’Connor to you?”
“Oh, so you don’t know everything after all, do you, Cassandra?”
I didn’t answer. He laughed.
“One of his very first stories was about my mother’s murder. Unlike those who just reported a ‘killing of a female inmate,’ he told her story. He knew how unfair it had all been. I saved it.” I heard a rustling sound and a fragile, yellow clipping was extended over my shoulder. It had O’Connor’s byline on it, all right. I couldn’t resist taking it from him. I read it, feeling Thanatos’ eyes on me as I did.
He must have been very young when he wrote it, but O’Connor had owned a moving style of writing from the day he first walked on the job. He painted Pauline Grant as a young woman to whom fate had been overly harsh. “Somewhere a young boy has been praying for the day when his mother will come back home to him. Who will explain to him what has become of her? As he grows to manhood, what faith will he have in justice and mercy?”
O’Connor, I thought to myself, you were the real Cassandra. You saw this coming, and no one paid heed. I handed the clipping back over my shoulder. I set aside the kind of aching longing I could so easily feel for O’Connor; I set aside a fleeting sense of hopelessness.
But as if he knew what I was feeling, he said, “Ah, you do miss him still. I understand. Time doesn’t heal every wound. Not the loss of a mother to a son or a father to a daughter.”
His daughter. I was chosen for Cassandra because Jimmy Grant thought of me as Irene O’Connor. “I happen to be proud of the man who gave me the Kelly name,” I said. “But what’s in a name?”
Saying it made me realize what had nagged at me about the conversation with Steven’s parents. Margaret- Maggie. Margaret-Peggy. I had heard the same names from the women at Fielding’s Nursing Home.
Margaret Robinson — Peggy Davis. Margaret Robinson whose profile at Mercury didn’t quite match the others. Who lost a child and then took another as a repayment. And whose journey to the River Lethe had, perhaps, allowed her adopted son to begin his long-awaited revenge.
“Did I tell you my father was a war hero?” the voice behind me was saying. He was speaking louder now; I was sure I already knew who he was. “I want you to understand. My mother loved my father. He was killed at Pearl Harbor. He was trapped in the hold of one of those ships, but he helped other men escape before he died. My mother was only nineteen when I was born, and she was widowed by the time I was five. But she was the best mother in the world.”
We heard sounds out in the hallway. “It’s time to go,” he said. “Look at me.”
I kept my gaze straight ahead. “Aren’t you afraid to take Cassandra from a sanctuary?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come now. You read your mythology. A man by the name of Ajax dragged Cassandra from Athena’s temple — a sacred place — and killed her. But the gods punished Ajax for his irreverence.”
“This is my game, Miss Kelly. You don’t make the rules. I do. Now turn around and look at me.”
“I know who you are. I don’t care to look at your face.”
I felt the cold, sharp tip of a knife laid up beneath my chin. I swallowed. “All right.”
He laughed and moved the knife. I slowly turned around and looked into the face I knew would be there.
“Is this better, Justin?”
“Don’t ever call me that again,” he said angrily. He grabbed my right arm and yanked me out into the aisle between the pews. I struggled to free myself but he knocked me to the floor. He sat on my back and pulled my right arm up behind me. He laid the knife against my face.
Since someone had yanked that same arm out of its socket not three months before, I own up to being something of a wimp about my arm being pulled up behind my back in that particular manner. The pain of the first injury was by no means a distant memory. I felt queasy. Nothing less than pure, unadulterated fear coursed through me.
“We’re going to go outside now,” he said. “We’re going to walk out to the parking lot as if we were lovers. I have this knife, but I also have a gun. And if you cause trouble, I’ll empty the gun into as many bystanders as I can shoot. And I’m an excellent shot. You’ll watch them die before I stab you in the heart. You’ll die knowing that you caused their deaths. Do we understand one another?”
I nodded.
He pressed the knife into my cheek.
“Yes, I understand!”
“Good.” He pulled me to my feet. “Take your jacket off and put it over your shoulders. Keep your arms out of the sleeves.”
I did as he asked. He grabbed my arm again, but hidden beneath my jacket, it would look as if he had an arm around me in an affectionate manner. He moved to my left side. “The gun is here in my jacket. In case your busy little mind should wonder, it will not be a problem for me to fire a gun with my left hand.”
He took me out into the hall. I prayed I could keep my face a mask, that no one would notice anything wrong. It was the start of evening visiting hours, and there were people everywhere. If he began shooting, he’d have no shortage of targets.
