turned into the ulcers, high blood pressure and heart palpitations that eventually led to his first heart attack. The drinking that wouldn't take away the ghosts but reduced their voices to whispers.
'It took me a long, long time to find you the first time,' the voice said softly. 'Imprisoned in this body, I had to use man-made methods. And when I finally found you, in my kindness I gave you a chance to save your soul. I was willing to release your son, and what did you do?'
I saved myself, Mark thought. It was true. He had saved himself, yes, but he also knew that if he had done what was asked of him — if he had agreed to meet with them and go back to living in that dark, underground hell — they wouldn't have released Charlie. Charlie had seen too much. They would have kept Charlie, tortured him as a way to punish me. If I had gone back, nothing would have changed. Nothing.
But at least you would have been with him, another voice added. Charlie wouldn't have been left alone with these people. You abandoned your son.
'You wouldn't have released him,' he said.
The voice moved closer to his ear. 'You, a coward and monster, are calling me a liar?'
His eye flew open and he saw shadows on the wall, shapes coming together.
'You let him suffer,' the voice said. 'Your child. Your son. You let him suffer for your sins.'
'I've seen what you do here.'
'And what is that, Thomas?'
'You torture and kill people.'
'We prepare sinners for a good death, Thomas. They are here for the same reason as you. You are here to atone. To ask for forgiveness.'
'No.'
'Then you have much to think about.'
'You're going to kill me.'
'We want to save you, Thomas. Do you value your soul?'
He swallowed rapidly, deciding to go with it. Tell them anything they wanted to hear and then find a way out of this dungeon of horrors.
'Yes,' he said, licking his lips. 'Yes, I do.'
'Are you ready to confess?'
'Yes.'
They gathered around him, the black robes and faces shielded by hoods, and he confessed to everything.
'Thank you, Thomas.'
A soft kiss on his forehead. Real lips. The Archon had taken off the mask.
His eye automatically slammed shut, not wanting to see the face, and he shivered all over.
'You are forgiven.'
The electricity shot through him again. When it stopped, he was barely conscious, vaguely aware of his mouth being opened and a clear tube coated with Vaseline being shoved down his throat.
40
Darby stood in the late John Smith's living room with her cold hands buried deep in her jeans pockets. She had glass shards in her hair. Blood was smeared on her clothes, and she caught its coppery reek under the pervasive odour of cordite. Her face and hands and joints throbbed. She had been cut but not too badly. The paramedic had used tweezers to remove the glass shards from her face, then cleaned her wounds and applied some sort of antibacterial ointment but no bandages. She stood in front of one of the two floor-to-ceiling windows that hadn't been blown out by the gunshots and she could see her reflection, the crisscrossed network of fine red cuts and scratches along the right side of her face.
The adrenalin rush had long since dissipated, leaving her with a familiar but still strange hollow feeling. Numb, as if her organs had been shot full of Novocain. Her mind kept replaying what had happened in slow motion. Here it came again, the first part, and again she didn't turn away from it.
Smith sitting to her right and getting to his feet and then, a split second later, his craggy face exploded. Skin and blood blew across her face and she thought exit wound. She hadn't heard the gunshot and her mind registered two facts at once: silencer and sniper. The exit wound — Smith's face — meant the contact shot had hit him in the back of the head. Meant the trajectory of the bullet had come from behind him, from somewhere across the street and from someplace high, like the trees or a roof. Meant that she had been followed here.
Darby was already on her feet, turning away and scrambling for the sliding glass door. She had to get inside the house, the only safe place to hide. She heard a panicked voice calling out from the backyard: 'Smitty? Smitty, are you okay?' Smith's wife, Mavis. Darby yelled gunshot over the wind as she ran, yelled at the woman to get inside the house.
The second shot took out one of the windows. Glass exploded across her face. Darby put her hand on the sliding glass door, threw it open and tumbled inside as the next shot took out the glass door. It hit the far wall. She had the phone in her hand and, standing near the kitchen, called 911. Told the operator shots were being fired, shouted for back-up and an ambulance, gave the address and dropped the phone. Unzipped her jacket and reached for her sidearm and saw Smith lying on his stomach, the severed arteries in his neck spraying blood in fine mists while the large, gaping wound pumped blood in great spurts on to the balcony floor as his dying body thrashed and thrashed. She turned away, stumbling blindly through the large maze of rooms, looking for the staircase that would lead her downstairs and into the backyard.
'Miss McCormick?'
The voice belonged to a black patrolman standing guard in front of the broken windows — A. DAVIS, his nameplate said. He was one of the squared-jawed first responding officers, an ebony-and-ivory pair who had immediately sectioned her off here, inside the living room. Davis had stayed with her while his partner radioed for homicide and back-up. She hadn't been allowed to assist in the search for the shooter. She knew he was long, long gone, but she wanted to go out there and find the spot, as well as the spent brass casings. She wanted to be useful, not stand here with her thumb up her ass, waiting to speak again to John Lu, the Nahant homicide detective who'd caught the case.
'You need to use the bathroom?' Davis asked. 'Maybe get you a glass of water?'
I want the bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey sitting on Smith's kitchen worktop.
'Water would be good,' she said.
'Stay right here, okay? Don't go wandering.'
She nodded and looked past the vacancy he left, at the two forensic techs from the state lab in Springfield taking detailed pictures of the former homicide detective. John Smith's headless body lay in a pool of cooling blood that had spread across the lit balcony floor and dripped over the sides. The techs had young faces and had good equipment and were doing a decent job of bracketing the shots.
The ocean wind blew against the house and whistled through the jagged holes left in the windows. When it died down, she could hear the murmured conversations as the techs spoke to each other. Heard the squawk of seagulls over the crackle of police radios and ringing cell phones.
The puppies were no longer barking. She assumed they'd been corralled somewhere away from the backyard crime scene.
'Dr McCormick.'
Not Davis; this voice belonged to the detective, Lu. She turned around and saw the thirty-something Asian guy holding a glass of water clinking with ice.
She took the glass and thanked him, noticing that he had called her doctor. She hadn't told the man she had a doctorate in criminal and abnormal psychology. Apparently Lu had made some phone calls. He probably knew her status with the Boston Police Department.
'Smith's wife?' she asked.
