Downstairs.”
They walked down the stairs and back into the living room.
“We’re going to make this look like a break-in, so I need to tie you up. I’ll call 911 from the road.
“Yes.”
He then bound Pomeroy’s legs together with plastic ties. The same with his wrists, but over his shirt to avoid marks. He put a washcloth across his eyes, then secured it with a small bungee cord. He then had him lie flat on the floor with a sofa pillow under his head.
According to the spec sheet, Pomeroy had a history of arrhythmia and was taking medication for high blood pressure and cholesterol. Actuarial statistics would give him a higher than 70 percent chance of dying by cardiac arrest. That narrowed the options to one.
And that came from a plant that grew four thousand miles south of Cape Cod in the rain forests of the Amazon—curare, a vine whose compound was used by local Indians to poison their arrows and blowgun darts. Also known as tubocurarine chloride, the substance upon injection caused paralysis of skeletal muscles, resulting in respiratory failure and death. With the standard autopsy, no trace of the compound would be detected, and the cause of death would be listed as cardiac arrest.
Roman moved into the next room and filled a syringe with 4cc curare. When he returned, he knelt beside Pomeroy on the couch. “Before I leave, I have a couple of questions. Is there anything in your research that would be a problem to the Catholic Church?”
“No, I told you that.”
“How about any government agency or whatever?”
“No.”
“Any personal enemies or associates?”
“Not that I can think of.”
He could see Pomeroy relax into the expectation that it would be over soon, that Roman would wrap up the break-in scene and leave. In his head, Roman rehearsed the next step. “One more thing…”
“What?”
“Shouldn’t have lost your faith.” In one smooth move, he threw himself full length onto Pomeroy’s body, jamming the needle deep into his left nostril and depressing the syringe with his thumb. Pomeroy’s body jolted under Roman as he let out a thin scream. Roman pulled the needle out of his face while trying to keep his body from bucking him onto the floor. The washcloth and bungee slid off Pomeroy’s face in the thrashing, and Roman did all he could to prevent the man from leaving any telltale bruises for the coroner to ponder.
Because the compound was rated six out of six in toxicity, in less than a minute Pomeroy’s torso and legs stiffened. His eyes bulged like cue balls and his mouth went slack, incapable of sucking in a breath. In seconds he had turned into a warm corpse, his legs giving an occasional twitch and his eyelids settling to slits of jelly.
Roman spread him out on the couch. He removed the tethers and adjusted Pomeroy’s clothing and feet until he looked like a man who had died from a heart attack while reading a magazine. He removed a copy of
Half an hour later, he pulled into the scenic parking area along Route 6A.
During the day, dozens of fishermen would be perched on the rocks below, casting their lines for stripers. At ten at night, only one diehard kept at it. Motoring down the canal from the waters of Boston Harbor was a long, sleek sailing vessel. One of these days, he would buy himself a piece like that and set course for Bermuda. Roman pulled out the secure cell phone provided him by the guy in the confessional and punched in the number given to him.
A male voice answered with a simple, flat, “Yes?”
“Mission accomplished.”
“Good. And in the manner prescribed?”
The voice sounded like that of Father X. “Yes.”
“We’re very grateful for your service. And so is the Lord God. You’re cleansing your soul and moving closer to eternal life, my brother.”
Roman felt something quicken inside, and it wasn’t the priestly kind of talk that embarrassed him as a kid. “Mean we’re not done?”
“In a few days you’ll hear from us. Thank you, my son.” And the man clicked off.
For a moment, Roman stared at the dead cell phone in disbelief. Then he folded it and slipped it into his jacket pocket. So there was more.
Below, the fisherman reeled in a striper. Working in the lights of the parking lot, he held the line with one hand, netting it with the other and hauling it onto the rocks. It looked under regulation size, twenty-nine inches, but after removing the hook from its mouth, he tossed it into a cooler.
Roman took a swig of his bottled water. As he watched the yacht slide down the dark expanse of the canal, the thought of a second assignment set off a giddy sensation in his gut. Maybe another fifteen grand. And maybe another millennium in paradise.
He looked out over the water, the shore lights on the far bank reflecting off the black surface. He thought about how interesting life had become of late. He raised his eyes to the sky. Above the black eastern horizon, stars began to emerge in the dark as if blown in by the sea. He sucked in the crisp salt air and took in the night. Above the far horizon, he saw a shooting star.
12
“The last thing I need is a bunch of religious fanatics flocking around him like he’s Our Lady of Lourdes,” Maggie said.
“Well, they won’t get to him anymore,” Kate said.
They were sitting in the hospital cafe the morning after the incident. Zack had been moved to another room in a different ward, known only to a handful of staff and family. At Maggie’s insistence, the hospital had posted a guard outside his room around the clock. “If he was such a healing force, you’d think it’d occur to them that he’d wake himself up.”
“Logic doesn’t appear to be their strong suit,” Kate said, sipping her coffee.
“Whatever. I’m not sure I’ll be by Sunday.” That was Easter, and Kate usually hosted a meal, less as a religious celebration than as an occasion for a family gathering.
“Maybe you can stop by for dessert after the hospital.”
Maggie nodded, distracted by something in her sister’s manner. And she was certain that missing Easter dinner wasn’t the issue. “Is everything okay?”
Kate looked at her for a moment as she turned something over in her head. “Yesterday Bob dropped in on a friend, Art Avedisian, in Harvard’s Department of Near Eastern Languages.”
Bob taught French literature at Wellesley College. “Yeah?”
“Well, he showed him the video of Zack.”
Maggie was suddenly alert. “Yeah.”
“It wasn’t glossolalia.”
“Of course not. It was plain gibberish.”
“Actually, it wasn’t gibberish. It was Aramaic.”
“Aramaic? Isn’t that some ancient language?”
