The Devil's Labyrinth

Teri followed suit, and Ryan lifted his Coke.

“To many more good Saturdays,” Tom said.

“Many more,” Teri echoed.

Ryan clicked his glass with theirs, but knew that from now on he’d much rather be at school with Melody and Clay Matthews, and the rest of his new friends than be home with Tom Kelly.

For tonight, he’d just get through dinner, and be polite, and not make his mother any more miserable than she already looked. He’d think about Tom Kelly and the rest of it when he was back in his dorm room, alone.

As alone as he already felt, now that he had apparently become just one more of the inconvenient kids stashed away at St. Isaac’s.

CHAPTER 39

ABDUL KAHADIJA WALKED slowly down the street. It was twilight, that strange time when the light of Allah is bright enough to illuminate the goal, but faded enough to hide all but the most obvious intruder. And there was nothing obvious about Abdul Kahadija; to anyone glancing out a window, he would have appeared no different from anyone who lived in the neighborhood, and when he casually slipped between two houses and into the backyard of his target, he might as well have been heading for his own garage.

A covered barbecue grill sat like a great humped creature on the wide patio, along with a table and four chairs, minus cushions and the umbrella that surely made this a homey scene, come long summer evenings.

He listened carefully. No sounds from inside the house. No sounds from neighboring houses. Through the glass in the kitchen door, he could see one lamp lighting the living room, as well as the porch light; the rest of the rooms were dark.

He pulled his thin black gloves a little tighter, then took a glass cutter from his pocket. Moving close to the door to muffle the sound, he etched a rough circle in the pane nearest the doorknob, then turned the cutter to rap the glass sharply with its opposite end.

Instead of a single piece of glass falling away, the entire pane shattered.

A dog barked a few houses away. Nothing else.

Abdul Kahadija reached through the broken glass, twisted the knob, and moved silently through the doorway and into the kitchen. Though no one was home, he was loath to make even the smallest of sounds; the tinkle of broken glass had been regrettable, but unavoidable, but there must be no more noise.

Abdul intended to leave nothing of himself in this house, no sound, no print, not even the essence of his spirit.

But where to begin a search for the tiny, easily concealed object he sought?

It could be anywhere.

He stood still in the center of the room and tried to sense the inhabitants of the house. Where might they put such a relic?

But he had no feel for them. They felt foreign — soulless. Surely they had no idea of the treasure that was in their possession.

He checked his watch. He had allowed himself twenty minutes to search, and already four minutes had passed, and he had not even begun.

He started with the small drawers in the kitchen, but it was only a cursory search; surely they wouldn’t keep it here. Still, he rummaged quickly through the tangle of rubber bands, receipts, a few screws and broken switch plates that filled the drawers. Not the kitchen.

The living room seemed too austere; what he sought would not be here, not even in the drawers of the breakfront where surely they kept their silver, if this family owned anything of such value.

The bedrooms.

Lightly, making no sound, Abdul glided up the stairs into the master bedroom, where his eyes fell instantly on a lacquered, inlaid jewelry chest that sat squarely on the dresser.

Praise be to Allah.

He unconsciously tugged his thin black gloves once more, then opened the lid of the jewelry box.

A metallic tune began to play, shattering the silence, and setting his heart to jackhammering in his chest.

Abdul quickly found the music box switch and depressed it with a finger while he used his other hand to go through the jewelry.

What he sought was not among the cheap necklaces and bracelets that filled the beautiful box. The box, indeed, was likely worth far more than its contents.

Where else to look? Then he remembered: women sometimes kept their most precious objects hidden with their lingerie.

He opened the top drawer of the dresser and gently ran his hands through the soft silk underwear, probing all the way to the back of the drawer.

Nothing.

Where? Where?

The bedside table.

As he opened the nightstand drawer, his elbow caught the edge of a picture frame, which tipped over the edge. He lunged to catch it, missed, and watched as it fell to the wooden floor, the glass shattering.

He looked at the photograph beneath the broken glass. A young boy, holding up a small fish. Should he take the broken photograph with him?

No, better to encourage wrong thoughts.

Abdul let it lay, returned to the jewelry box, grabbed up a handful of earrings and necklaces and stuffed them into one of his pockets. He opened the lingerie drawer and left it open.

Then he left as silently as he had entered, his spirits heavy with disappointment. It was dark now, and in the blackness of the shadows behind the house he stripped off his black gloves, then walked nonchalantly back to the quiet street and around the corner of the next block.

He would dispose of the cheap jewelry in the Dumpster behind the convenience store he had passed on his way here.

As he slipped away into the darkness of the night he told himself that his failure to recover the relic was only a potential problem for his mission. The chances that the stupid people in the house even knew what they owned were slim, and if they truly didn’t, then the object’s existence would be of no consequence. Though he would feel supremely safer if he had it in hand, his chances of success in his mission were still all but certain.

Victory —vengeance—would still be his to claim.

CHAPTER 40

FATHER LAUGHLIN SLOWED as he neared the door to Jeffrey Holmes’s tiny room buried deep in the subbasement beneath the old brownstone that had been absorbed by the school nearly a century earlier and now served as its rectory. As he stood alone in the murky depths of the labyrinth beneath the school, what had seemed like an excellent idea in the aftermath of his conversation with the boy’s poor grandmother now seemed more like the act of an old fool. Still, if he could recreate what Father Sebastian had achieved with Sofia Capelli a few days ago, and Melody Hunt this very afternoon — and he believed in his heart that he could — what a wonderful thing it would be.

He would bring Jeffrey Holmes back into God’s light.

Despite Sebastian Sloane’s certainty that the boy was beyond redemption, Laughlin’s faith told him that God would not abandon Jeffrey any more than he had Sofia or Melody.