something like that. She knew it. He was watching her from the periphery of her life, just out of sight but close enough to touch. And she hadn’t even known it.
She thought about the name again. It had been bothering her – there was something about it. She grabbed a pen and paper from the drawer in the coffee table beside her and wrote the name again;
she started rearranging the letters. When she realized, it was so simple, she almost laughed. “Vince A. Gemiennes’’ was an anagram for “Vengeance is mine.’’
“Unbelievable,’’ she muttered.
What were the odds? Her mother had died at the hands of a serial killer and now she was being stalked by one. Maybe there was some genetic coding that marked her as a victim. The thought made her shudder. Jed McIntyre had chosen his victims because they were so valuable to the people who loved them – their children, specifically. This bastard chooses them…why?
Shawna, Maria, Christine, and Harold were strangers, ghosts in this world. Unconnected. Disposable. But there was some reason the killer had wanted vengeance on them. They were religious people, though. They went to church. But there was something she was missing. Something so obvious. “O Righteous God, who searches minds and hearts…’’
The fact that he had taken such a risk in coming to her house was an indicator that he was losing control of his desires. He would start making mistakes now. And she was there – waiting for him, like he’d waited for his victims. And he’d pay, the way she’d always wanted to make Jed McIntyre pay. I am nobody’s fucking victim.
But she was so tired. It was too much…the anniversary of her mother’s death, a second house call from a serial killer, and now Jeffrey. She felt as if her head and her heart were going to explode.
One by one they left, the cops, the technicians, the photographer. Everyone had hoped that the killer had jacked off in the bedroom, leaving behind some good DNA, but no such luck. Lydia remained on the couch in the dark, staring out the window into the black night sky. Finally, when they were alone, Jeffrey joined her. He sat down beside her and opened his arms to her and she slid into their protective fold. She told him about the name.
“I’ve been thinking,’’ she said.
“About…’’
“What they have in common.’’
“And…?’’
“Well, they were religious to a degree, right? But they all committed actions that could be considered sins. All of them could have been considered sinful people.’’
“O Righteous God, who searches minds and hearts, bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure…’’ Jeffrey recited the message on her mirror.
“Yes.’’
“God forgives sins.’’
“But maybe our killer doesn’t.’’
“And he takes their hearts because…’’
“Because their hearts are false, because they are untrue to God.’’
“Jesus.’’
“Does he think I am untrue to God? Has he seen me at the church but thinks I write of godless things? That I’ve done sinful things?’’
“I don’t know.’’
“I have, you know.’’
“It’s all right.’’
“Is it?’’
“Yes. As long as I’m alive no one will ever hurt you. I promise you that. I swear to God.’’
She didn’t want to tell him about the things she’d done, the faceless men she’d sought to bring some ridiculous semblance of love into her life. She didn’t want to tell him how alone she’d finally realized she was and how much she needed him. And how she still missed her mother every day. How broken inside she felt, and that all these broken people, with their lonely, empty lives, all these people who no one mourned, were like mirrors for her. And how she couldn’t bear it anymore, the horrible aloneness of her life. So instead she reached for his face and kissed him gently on the mouth.
With deft fingers he unbuttoned her blouse, his mouth never leaving hers until he slid the garment off her shoulders, let it fall to the floor. He drew in a sharp breath at her beauty and kissed the delicate slope of her shoulder, the soft nape of her neck. He let her pull his T-shirt off, and groaned as her lips glanced his chest and alighted on the scar on his shoulder. He felt her fingers unbutton his jeans and he grew hard for her.
She stood and offered him her hand and led him up the stairs to his bed, not wanting to face the mess in her bedroom. She stripped off the rest of her clothes and stood before him. He traced the lines of her body with reverent hands, kissing her breasts, then running his lips down to her tight belly, then to the sacred place below. Her moans, her hands in his hair, brought him to his knees. Then he rose and lifted her onto the bed. She pulled off his jeans, and touched him with a tenderness he had never known, stroking him, caressing him. His pleasure was so intense, he could make no sound as he entered her.
She could feel the power of his desire as he thrust himself deeply inside her. Slowly, gently at first, then harder, more urgent. His arms held her as close to him as she could be and his lips were on hers with an insatiable hunger. She had dreamed of this but never had she imagined it so beautifully, never had she realized how much she loved him, how strong was her desire – or his. And as he repeated her name over and over like a prayer, she gave in to the building crescendo of her pleasure as they came together.
They lay wrapped around each other beneath the moonlight that slipped into the room between passing clouds, not speaking, not sleeping, but savoring each other.
“I’ll never leave you now, you realize that,’’ he said, lifting his head to look into her eyes.
“I know,’’ she said and smiled. “That night in the hospital, Jeffrey?’’
“Yeah, I wanted to tell you then. But you stopped me.’’
“If I had known the sex was going to be this good, I wouldn’t have.’’
Moving past their awe of what had happened between them, they laughed. It was a laughter full of relief, comfort, of homecoming.
Eighteen
Even as he knelt before the altar, rosary in his hands, he could not feel the presence of God. There had been times in prayer when Father Luis had felt the presence of the Lord so profoundly that it had made him weep. But today, he was alone. Perhaps, he considered, he had been for the past thirty years. What use would God have for a priest whose whole life was a lie? Who had done nothing but lie since the day of Juno’s birth?
In his mind he could argue the existence of God. In his actions, he affirmed his faith in the Church. But his heart seized with doubt in the face of the violence, poverty, and pain he witnessed in the lives of his parishioners, in the news of his world. It was an ache within him that did not begin with the death of his sister but had solidified that day, became like the benign tumor he had on the bottom of his foot which he felt only when it rained, but then every step was agony.
He had prayed feverishly since the police had visited, asking for guidance, for a sign. But no answers came. Rather, no different answers came. Father Luis knew it was time for Juno to know the truth of his past. Perhaps God had abandoned the priest in his prayers because he was really only asking for a reason to excuse further cowardice, more lies.
When Luis looked at Juno, he was sometimes overwhelmed with feelings of love and tenderness. As a child, Juno was so delicate, so sensitive, the picture of cherubic innocence. Luis wanted only to protect him within the walls of the church. In this, at least, he had not failed.
Juno’s blindness kept him necessarily isolated and the church kept him sheltered. Interaction with other children had been limited to mass and Sunday school. Juno had never heard the sound of a television set. His uncle kept an old transistor radio but very few channels came in clearly except a classical-music station and the
