“There’s your plague pit, then,” Mike whispered.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Mike grabbed my arm and held a finger to his mouth to shush me. “Hear it?”
I waited for the current to draw the waves back into the bay. Then I was able to hear a noise wafting through the dense mist. A whimpering sound, muffled now, not clear and shrill like the scream that split the night sky a few minutes earlier.
Mike pointed again, toward the south end of the picket fence and started to walk in that direction. He had drawn his weapon — the Glock 19 that was the duty gun of choice for most of the NYPD.
Now he was moving at a snail’s pace, as was I behind him. He was trying to bypass every twig, every bramble that might snap when stepped on. I walked in the damp imprint of his large steps.
We inched along and seemed to be drawing closer to the whimpering woman.
Another step and Mike stood still. I looked down and saw, at the very place his toes were, a cement block — a row of them side by side, actually — then a gaping black hole ahead. It looked like a deep foundation — the only remains of an old building.
He tapped the flashlight in his rear pocket, and I pulled it out. He braced himself and held both arms straight ahead, nodding at me to shine the light into the darkened space that had been dug into the ground so very long ago.
Fyodor Zukov was directly below us, standing over the body of Chastity Grant. She was gagged now — probably after her penetrating scream — and bound as well, hands and feet. I could see the red fabric — aerial silk — that her captor had used to restrain her.
Next to her head on the dirt floor — nestled on top of a large duffel bag — was a long-handled ax, the kind of tool that had been used to sever the neck of Naomi Gersh.
Zukov was holding an implement of some kind. He had clearly been waiting for us, as Mike had expected. As soon as the light hit him, he prodded Chat in the neck with the sharp end of his stick and she emitted another ungodly sound.
“Drop it, Zukov,” Mike said. “Drop the bullhook or I shoot.”
I hadn’t recognized it as a bullhook, the vicious steel-tipped instrument used to goad elephants, the inhumane device some circus trainers favored to push and yank deep into the animal’s sensitive flesh to control its movements.
Mike took aim to fire, but Zukov’s hands — though weaker, perhaps — were still faster than Mike’s. He swiveled and raised the curved handle of his bizarre weapon, hooking it around Mike’s left ankle and dragging him over the cement block, down into the hole.
I heard Mike hit bottom with a thud. I shined the light on him and could see that the fall had dislodged the Glock from his hand.
Zukov stabbed at Mike’s back as he tried to struggle to his feet.
“I prefer to call it a shepherd’s crook,” the killer said, referring to the C-curve handle that indeed resembled the staff used by priests and bishops. How ironic that the cruel circus tool was also a symbol of Christ’s ministry. “The Gospel of John, chapter ten, verse eleven. ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.’ ”
Mike got to his knees and Zukov thrust the bullhook into his back again.
“I’m not afraid to lay down my life, Ms. Cooper, like Christ did for all of us,” Zukov said, looking up at me. He obviously knew who I was from his courtroom visit. “How about you? Are you ready to die?”
FIFTY-TWO
“GET out of here, Coop!” Mike yelled to me. I assumed that he hadn’t gotten to his feet immediately to take on Zukov because he’d hurt his leg — maybe the ankle that had been so badly injured a year ago. “Get as far away as you can till the Coast Guard arrives.”
“They’ll be too late,” Zukov said. “Whenever it is they get here, they’ll be late.”
I was way too tired to think clearly. Running wasn’t an option. I didn’t know whether to stay where I was until the crazed killer decided which of his victims to go for first, or to lower myself into the old foundation and try to find Mike’s gun.
“You must be one of the detectives, aren’t you?” he said to Mike. “I have to hand it to you. I never thought you’d find us on Penikese. I figured I’d have some time to get to know Reverend Grant more intimately.”
Fyodor Zukov had indeed confused Faith Grant with her sister, whom she so closely resembled. Chastity may have been the black sheep of her hometown, but when she showed up at the Christmas performance of Ursula Hewitt’s play — surrounded by the other ordained women — he made the mistake of targeting her. Her changed appearance from the December evening when she had gone goth — and now the striking resemblance between the sisters with Chat’s natural hair color and style restored — had caused Zukov to kidnap the wrong sibling.
“She’s not a minister,” I said, trying to keep an eye on Zukov while using the light to look for Mike’s gun.
“You know, Ms. Cooper, she’s told me that over and over. But I’ve done my research well. I’ve been to the seminary and I’ve talked to her friends, and I don’t think I’ve made a mistake. She has offended God and she must be silenced for that.”
Now Zukov was using the long, pointed end of the bullhook to poke around for the Glock too. I could see that Mike was spread out on his belly, inching himself forward like a reptile. He must have had some sense where the pistol had landed.
“Stay as calm as you can, Chat,” I said. “Every police department in the northeast knows you’re here. Faith sent us to find you, and we’re going to get you out of here.”
“Don’t play games with me!” Zukov shouted, waving the bullhook wildly overhead. “I know who this woman is.”
I could hear her racked sobs from beneath the silk ties that covered Chat’s mouth.
“The Reverend Grant — the minister — is at her seminary in New York. Don’t make this any worse for yourself, Fyodor. You can let—”
“They’re not ministers,” he said, watching Mike carefully but yelling in my direction, as though the wind carried his message across the seas. He looked every bit the madman as he preached to me. “None of these foolish women are ministers. They should all be silenced by the church. Silenced by me, before I die.”
“The woman you’re holding is not—”
“Priests and ministers are linked to the person of the incarnate Christ. The Father begets the Son.” Fyodor Zukov was raving now. “The priest presides at the altar and says what Christ said, does what Christ did. In that moment and in that ministry, he
Mike was using the distraction of this maniacal sermon to edge himself forward.
“Tell her the truth, Ms. Cooper,” Zukov said, switching gears to a soft whisper of a voice. “No one will find any of us here. Not in time.”
Somehow, while he’d been ranting, Zukov caught Mike’s movement, and swung suddenly around, kicking his right leg up in a wide arc that took dead aim at Mike’s head.
I screamed and Mike ducked, but the martial-arts training combined with the grace and balance of Zukov’s circus artistry was in full display.
“How’s your sambo?” Mike called out, taunting the devil himself.
It looked like Zukov was waiting for Mike to lead him to the gun before he struck a deadly blow with the sharp point of the bullhook.
“I fight for Christ, Detective. That’s why you’ll be so easy to kill.”
“If you thought the Reverend Portland would be your decoy, Fyodor,” I said, hoping to get his attention, “you were wrong.”
He looked away from Mike and up at me, surprised that we knew as much as we did.
