The Face of Death

boy's name was Juan, wasn't it?' I ask Cabrera.

He nods. 'Yes. An angel named Juan.'

I don't know if his picture of Juan as a young saint is the truth, or the overidealized memories of a once terrified and abused child who found a very good friend when he needed one most. What I do know is that this is a story I've heard before. It's a story where no one wins, not even us.

Killers are killers, and what they do is unforgivable, but there's a certain tragedy in the ones that were made. You see it in their rage. Their actions are less about joy and more about screaming. Screaming at the father who abused them, the mother who beat them, the brother who burned them with cigarettes. They begin with helplessness and end with death. You capture them and put them away because it must be done, but there's no savage satisfaction to it.

'Please go on,' Alan says. His voice is gentle now.

'He told me that he had come to realize God had another plan for him. That he had sinned in thinking himself saintly, in comparing his sufferings to those of Christ. His duty, he now knew, was not to heal, but to avenge.' Cabrera shifts in his chair, uneasy. 'His eyes were terrible to see when he spoke these words. Such rage and horror. They did not look like the eyes of someone touched by God. But who was I to say?' He sighs. 'He had escaped from his captors. He told me about returning in later nights to visit blood and vengeance on the men who had tortured him. It's how he came to understand that it had been two men, an FBI agent and a policeman, who had betrayed him and the other children. These men, he told me, were the most evil of all, the men wearing masks, hiding behind symbols.

'He had a plan, a long design, and he asked me to help. He couldn't be captured once everything had been done, because God had revealed to him that his work extended beyond vengeance for just his own suffering. He needed me to become him, in your eyes. I agreed.'

'Sir,' Alan says to him, 'do you know where we can find Juan?'

He nods. 'Of course. But I will not tell you.'

'Why?' Alan asks him. 'You have to know that he's not doing God's will, Gustavo. You know that. He's murdered innocent people. He's ruined a young girl's life.' Alan locks eyes with him. ' 'Thou shalt not kill,' Gustavo. You've killed for him. Innocent young men in that FBI lobby died, good men who never hurt a child or did anything less than their job.'

Pain fills his face. 'I know this. I do. And I will pray to God for forgiveness. But you must understand--you must! He saved me. I cannot betray him. I cannot. I am not doing this for what he is now. I'm doing this for what he once was.'

It should be melodramatic; his total sincerity just makes it agonizing. Alan goes at him again and again, retrieves the sweat and the cheek-twitch, but it's like running into a wall.

Cabrera had been saved from a fate that some would argue was a lot worse than death. Juan had helped him to escape, not just his physical prison, but his despair. Cabrera's own life had been ruined, to some degree, by the evil done to him, but his faith still promised an ultimate salvation, a door Juan had left open for him. As for Juan . . . well. That was a horror story that I just couldn't take in. The most terrible, terrible, terrible thing was that we had helped create this monster. Someone corrupt had sold him down the river and had ruined the gentle boy with the unshakable faith. Juan had fallen, but not without the help of those he trusted most. Everything here was about either the absolute worst or the absolute best in people, and I didn't see Cabrera budging.

'There is one good thing I am allowed to do,' he says.

'What's that?'

He inclines his head toward the left side of the home. 'In the den, on the computer. You'll find the location of the girls. Jessica and Theresa. They are alive.' He sighs again, sadder this time 'Placed in hell by an angel. They have had a difficult time.'

'Where are they?'

I'm asking this of Alan. He's already told me, but it's not sinking in.

'North Dakota,' Alan says. 'In what used to be a missile silo. Ten thousand square feet, all of it underground, and the ground it's under is in the middle of nowhere. The government cleaned out a number of silos and underground bases over the years. They sold them, most often to real estate companies who fixed them up and resold the properties to individuals.'

'And that's legal?' I ask, dumbfounded.

Alan shrugs. 'Sure.'

As Cabrera had promised, we'd found the location where Theresa and Jessica were being held on the personal computer in the den, along with grainy photos of what I assumed to be the girls themselves. They were nude and they looked drawn and unhappy, but otherwise unharmed.

'Get in touch with the field office up there. Let's get the girls out and bring them here. Do we know how to enter the place?'

'An electronic combination lock with a thirty-digit code. I'll make sure they have it.'

He heads toward the front door of the house. The air outside is filled with the sound of TV news helicopters. Just them, so far; it was one of the nice things about the home being on land behind gates and walls. Brady has men guarding the entrance to the estate until the local cops take over. No one in, period. Boone and one other member of the SWAT team are in a coroner's wagon, escorting Cabrera's 'body,'

ostensibly to the morgue. In reality, Cabrera will never make it to the morgue. He'll be held under guard at a safe house. I take a moment to look around.

He came here, but he didn't live here.

I hit a number on my speed dial and put the phone to my ear.

'What?' James asks, preamble-less as usual.

'Where are you?'

'Signing myself out. These morons want me to stay here. I'm going home.'

'Not nice, James. The 'morons' you're speaking about patched you up.'

'That part wasn't stupid. Keeping me here is.'

I let it go. 'I need another viewpoint.'

'Go ahead,' he says without hesitation.

This is what keeps the rest of us from strangling James. He is always ready to work. Always. I fill him in on everything that's occurred.

'Cabrera says he knows the identity of The Stranger. He's not going to reveal it.'

James is silent, thinking.

'I'm not coming up with anything.'

'Me neither. Listen, I know you said you were going home, but I need you to get back to Michael Kingsley's computer. He wouldn't have made it unsolvable. He wants us to crack it.'

'Dakota is on it,' Alan says, startling me from my thoughts. 'They're sending agents and a SWAT team. Local bomb squad too, just in case The Stranger decided to be cute.'

'Where's Kirby?'

'Gone. She said she was going back to the safe house.'

'We have a problem, Alan. We have no evidence. Not a shred of forensic data that we can hold up. Even if we knew who he was, everything is circumstantial. At best.'

He spreads his hands. 'Only one thing to do, then.'

'What's that?'

'Work the scene. Get Callie and Gene and whoever over here and let them go to town. I've been through this before. So have you. Sometimes there's no substitute for down and dirty police work.'

'I know that. The problem I have with it is conceptual. When I look at this case, do you know what I see? That none of the breaks have been forensic. They've all been about outthinking him. About understanding him. He doesn't leave things behind.'

'But he does leave things out. Like with Theresa. He couldn't control that, and he missed the fact that Sarah omitted it.' Alan shrugs.

'He's smart. He's not superhuman.'