was lying in a bed, his eyes closed, but moving beneath the lids. His lips were glistening with some hydrating balm, and in a strange guttural voice he muttered something totally unintelligible but what sounded like actual language from the rhythm and pattern. The recording lasted for maybe a minute, then he ceased muttering and resumed his coma state as if nothing had happened. “I don’t know what that is. That’s not even my voice.”
“I know. Which makes it even weirder. But a language expert confirmed you were speaking Aramaic. Actually, the Lord’s Prayer. Maybe you memorized it for a paper or something?”
“I’d remember that. And what kind of course would that be?” Suddenly he felt overwhelmingly tired.
“Maybe your father taught it to you as a child.”
“Maybe.”
She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Whatever. The nurse wants you to get some rest.” She kissed him on the forehead. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.” He watched her leave the room, fatigue overtaking him. The last thing he wanted was to slip back into sleep and dream.
But, thankfully, he fell into a deep blank for the next six hours.
18
Killing for God took all the pressure off. No issues of conscience or morality. No worry about a bad afterlife. Plus you did good by doing well, just as Father X had said.
A week after dispatching Thomas Pomeroy, Roman Pace got another call on the secure phone. In the same feathery voice, Father X said he had another assignment. Another of Satan’s henchmen. Would he accept the mission? Yes. For the same fee? Yes.
Life was good.
The instruction was for Roman to drive to the parking lot at the Burlington Mall at eight fifteen that morning, where at the base of a particular light pole he would find a small bag containing another payment and another cell phone, which he was to answer when it rang at eight twenty. Like the other, this one was secure. Nonetheless, he was to remove the battery and to discard it and the phone separately to avoid tracing.
At precisely eight fifteen, Roman drove to the parking lot, which was vast and empty at that hour. He spotted a security car moving in the opposite direction, so whoever had hired him knew he wouldn’t be noticed pulling up to the pole to snatch the brown bag.
In it was the money, three banded packs of hundreds, and another cell phone. Minutes later it rang with Father X calling to confirm pickup. Roman then drove off, humming with curiosity as to why a man of the cloth had advanced him another fifteen grand to pop another scientist.
This one was a Dr. LeAnn Cola from the Department of Neurology at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Her death was to look accidental and without similarities to Pomeroy’s. According to her biography, Cola was divorced and living with her fifteen-year-old daughter. They owned no pets because the daughter was asthmatic.
Before he returned home, Roman violated protocol and called back. “I’ve not done women before, so I’m just wondering about her.”
“I can’t go into details, but let it suffice to say that in the eyes of the Lord she has committed acts of abomination against heaven itself.”
“Can you give me a hint like what?”
“No, I’m sorry. But rest assured that you will please God in this service.”
* * *
Number 147 Forest Street in Cobbsville, New Hampshire, was a brick garrison that was nestled in shrubbery on a quiet street with deep lawns. The house next door was lightless. The house on the other side was hidden by hemlocks. Across the street was conservation land. Nearly perfect.
Roman parked down the street and waited two hours until the lights went out, another hour to be certain that mother and daughter were asleep. It was an unusually warm spring night, making him wish he could turn on the AC, except that might draw attention. So he waited in the warm interior, reminding himself that a few months ago he had been saved from dying for this mission. That it wasn’t blind luck, but that God so loved him that He intervened, giving Roman another chance, as if God were saying,
Roman slipped out of his car and cut to the rear of the house. There were four rooms on the second floor; two of them had air conditioners that were turned on. Perfect.
But there was no AC in the downstairs family room, where a screened window was open a couple of inches. He wedged the blade of his pocketknife under the frame, slid that up, and raised the window. No wiring on the window and no motion detector in the room. It always amazed him how most people left themselves so vulnerable. A brain doctor living alone with her daughter. You’d think she would get an alarm system or at least lock the windows.
He slipped inside a family room, where sectional sofas faced a flat-screen TV. All was quiet. He passed through a hallway to the kitchen. No motion detectors anywhere or alarm panel. But he did spot a shiny six-burner gas stove. He moved to the front of the house and the staircase leading to the second floor.
At the top of the landing was a door with a sign, “Victoria’s Room.” The daughter. Across from it was the master bedroom. He inched open the door. In the orange light from a lava lamp he saw the hump of the girl asleep on her back. The AC hummed in the window, chilling the air. That was good, because the girl slept under several blankets, and the machine would drown out sounds.
But first the mom.
He closed the door and cut across the landing to the master bedroom. All he could hear from within was another air conditioner. He opened the door. The woman was asleep in a king-size bed to the right. The AC was blowing chilled air from a window on the left. He closed the door and in the ambient light moved to the woman’s side of the bed. She was making feathery snoring sounds.
He clamped her mouth with a gloved hand and put the gun to her head. “Wake up.”
The woman’s eyes opened, and for a frozen moment she glared at him. Then she jolted and screamed into his hand.
“Your daughter’s in the next room. You scream, I’ll kill her. Do you understand? I will kill your daughter if you make a peep.”
She nodded and moaned that she understood.
He let go of her mouth.
“What do you want?” Her voice was a tightly stretched wire.
“I want you to tell me your connection to Thomas Pomeroy.”
“Thomas … Tom Pomeroy?”
“How did you know him? What’s your relationship to him? And keep your voice down.”
“W-we worked together. Who are you?”
“Doing what where?”
“A project.”
“What kind of project?”
“We were working on MRI machines. Magnetic resonance imaging.”
“For hospitals.”
“Yes. He helped develop hardware.”
“That tells me nothing.”
“We were doing high resolution of the brain.”
“Who was paying you?”
“We had a private grant.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know.”
