Shiver

  Abby rounded a vine-draped corner and sent up a prayer for her poor fragile mother. “Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry,” she said aloud, her heart heavy.

  I forgive you. Faith’s words seemed to float from the heavens and Abby nearly stopped dead in her tracks. Is that what she’d meant? An icy finger of understanding slid down her spine. As she hurried along the broken sidewalk to the back of the building she thought of the monster who had abused Faith, the doctor who had slipped into Room 307, and under the guise of helping and healing had brought with him perversion and pain.

  “I hope you rot in hell,” she muttered into the gloom of dusk.

  Light was fading fast, the sun disappearing behind thick clouds as it settled behind the trees, the threat of rain heavy in the air. Hurrying, she followed a broken sidewalk to the back door, which didn’t budge. It was locked tight, just as it had been on her previous visit. But the window she’d hoisted herself through before was still unlatched and partially open. Sister Maria hadn’t remembered to close it nor told the caretaker to see that it was locked. But then the nun hadn’t had much time, Abby thought ruefully as she didn’t doubt for a second that Sister Maria was already dead.

  She stared at the partially open window.

  A stroke of luck?

  Or a bad omen?

  There was a part of her that was still afraid; still hesitant about this.

  Her father’s mantra whispered through her brain. When the going gets tough…

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. Enough already!” She gave herself a mental shake and pushed back her fears. Nervously she dropped her backpack inside the window then heaved herself over the sill and landed to the floor.

  She was here!

  Deep within his sacred room he heard the quiet thump of feet hit the floor overhead. His heart rate accelerated and he took in a deep breath. He’d known she’d come. Lured by the past, Faith’s daughter would return to the place where all her pain had begun. He licked his lips and blinked.

  His pain, of course, had started much earlier.

  As he stared at the walls of his room, he saw the writing he’d worked so diligently to create. Passages of scripture, words of the great philosophers on sin, his own personal theories formulated by his own mother, reinforced at the strict Catholic schools that had eventually all kicked him out.

  He listened hard. Heard footsteps. Of the daughter.

  Deep inside he felt that stirring again, the lust he’d experienced for Faith Chastain, the wrath he’d felt knowing she was giving herself to the doctor as well.

  The wages of sin is death.

  How many times had he heard that from his mother as she’d sat by the window, Bible lying open on her lap, cigarette burning neglected in the ash tray, ice cubes melting in her drink. “He’ll pay,” she’d told her only son often enough. “Your father and his whoring new wife are sinners and they’ll both pay.” She’d taken a sip of her drink, her little tongue licking up a drop that lingered on her lip. “We all do.” She’d looked over at him and there had been no hint of motherly love in her gaze. “You will, too. You’ve got his blood in your veins and you’ll pay.” Another sip before she rained on him that twisted sarcastic smile he’d grown to hate. “But then you already are, aren’t you? The nuns at school have told me.”

  Now, he felt the same pulsing shame run through him as she’d ranted about the sins that had been pounded into her own head while growing up. Lighting another cigarette in fingers that had shaken, she’d focused on his transgressions. The nuns had told her he’d cheated in school, which had been a lie, of course, but she’d believed the sisters and to punish him, to make him consider his sinful ways, she’d locked in him a closet.

  It hadn’t been the first time.

  Once before he’d been caught kissing a girl at school. Upon returning home, he’d faced a fierce, embarassed and angry mother. That time he’d been stripped naked, locked away for three days, left in his own urine and feces without water. He’d been ordered, as penance to write on the walls, the wages of sin is death. For the three days of his imprisonment he’d believed he would die in that empty closet that had once housed his father’s guns.

  He’d been released of course. Just as he always had been when his mother, reeking of alcohol, had finally decided he’d been punished enough. Then, always she would cry and beg for him to forgive her, bathe him, offer up new clothes, an expensive toy and kiss him…all over…while gently tending to the bruises and cuts that covered his body, scars from his efforts of trying to break free.

  She’d been tender then, lovingly caressing him, assuring him that if he would repent and atone for his sins, he would find favor with God. With her.

  Once after a particularly long stay in the closet, he’d felt not only fear, but rage. When he’d heard the locks click and seen that first blinding crack of light, he’d stood and walked past her, refused to let her touch him, and thrown her gifts of atonement back in her face. He’d threatened to leave her, to tell his father what she’d done. She’d shaken and cried but admitted that the man who had sired him had never wanted him in the first place. His father had paid for an abortion she’d refused. And later, after she’d given birth, had his father stuck around? Oh, for a few years, but after less than a paltry decade, the marriage had unraveled, his father had strayed and had abandoned them both.

  At the time when she’d told him about this father wanting an abortion when she was crying and quaking, unable to hold her cigarette in her trembling fingers, he realized that this once she’d been telling the truth. His father had, indeed, abandoned them both for the whore.

  He’d known then it was his mission to set things right, his own personal atonement for being unwanted.

  And he’d eagerly taken up that sword of vengeance.

  Hadn’t the new wife died?

  Hadn’t he been looked upon suspiciously?

  Hadn’t he ended up here…locked away permanently until the hospital had closed and he’d been shuffled from one facility to the next, always a private institution, always peppered with nuns and priests and rosaries and crucifixes, always knowing his every sin was being observed and catalogued, never forgotten and never forgiven. He’d tried to stay true to his mission and not to follow his own urges. He’d tried to fight his own desires.

  And yet…with Faith…he’d risked it all, condemning his soul to the depths of hell just to touch her and lie with her, to feel her sweet, warm body wrapped over his.

  And now the daughter, who looked enough like Faith to be her twin, was here.

  He glanced again at the words etched into the walls of this room. Above the passages he’d scratched into the walls, he carefully painted fourteen simple words for the fourteen victims, the sinners and the saints, those who would be punished, those who would do the punishing.

  If only Faith were here…she would understand. She would soothe him. She would love him. But that was not to be. The lazy doctor had killed her. Fucked her, then, upon being found out by the daughter, pushed Faith, beautiful Faith, through the window.

  His body convulsed as he remembered her scream, the sound of her body thudding against the concrete. Tears burned the back of his eyes. White-hot rage roared through his veins.

  Faith’s death hadn’t been an accident as so many believed.

  He knew.

  He’d been there.

  And so the doctor would pay for his sins.

  Tonight.

  Inside the hospital, the rooms were shadowy and still, twilight seeping through the windows that weren’t boarded, the air stagnant with a thin rank odor. Abby felt the temperature drop, the atmosphere thicken.

  No way, you’re just freaking yourself out. Keep going!

  She unzipped the pack and pulled out her flashlight. A part of her brain screamed that what she was doing was just plain nuts, that she was as crazy as some of the people who had once lived here, that if she had any sense at all, she would turn and make tracks.

  Why not come back in the morning
?

  In full daylight?

  With an attack dog, Montoya and a gun?

  Because she wanted answers now.

  Because momentum was propellng her forward.

  Because she couldn’t bear the thought of waiting one more instant.

  Because it was now or never.

  She lifted the backpack to her shoulder again. The fingers of one hand were curled around a crow bar, the fingers of the other hand gripping a flashlight. She swept the thin beam over the dusty floor boards, shining it on the windows. She spied rotted, peeling wallpaper and cobwebs draped from the corners of old chandeliers as she walked softly through the first floor. Every scary movie she’d seen where the kids split up and start inching their separate ways down dark hallways played through her mind.

  Never had she felt more alone.

  Never had she been more determined.

  You have to do this. You have to remember.

  The building groaned softly.

  Abby bit back a scream.

  It’s nothing, just the settling of old timbers. You hear the same thing in your house.

  She took two steps into the kitchen and heard another noise. Her heart lurched.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  The scratch of tiny claws. She whipped the flashlight around, its beam jumping across old counters and the stove top to the rusted sink where she saw the furry back end of a rat sliding into the drain, its tail slithering like a tiny black snake as it disappeared.

  “Jesus,” she whispered, her heart knocking crazily.

  Abby walked slowly, hearing her own footsteps, her own heartbeat.

  She closed her eyes, thought she heard a soft cry.

  Don’t do this to yourself. No one’s here. Don’t let your fears run wild. Do not fall victim to your mother’s paranoia.

  Taking in a long, shuddering breath, she gripped the crowbar as if it were her only salvation. She swallowed back her fear but swore that if she listened really hard, she could hear the muted sobs and wails of despair from the patients who had suffered here.

  Stop it. There is no one in this damned building, no one moaning or sobbing, for God’s sake. Now, get going! It’s nearly dark. Come on, Abby, get this over with!

  Montoya floored the accelerator, ignoring the speed limit. He passed other cars and trucks, his jaw set, his pulse pounding in his temple. The image of his aunt’s body laid upon Billy Ray’s corpse burned through his mind and his fingers curled more tightly over the steering wheel. What if the monster had gone after Abby? “Fuck,” he growled, shifting down and passing a flat bed truck, spraying gravel as his back wheels hit the shoulder.

  At a straight stretch in the road, he grabbed his cell phone and speed dialed her home.

  He counted the rings, his dread mounting. “Come on,” he urged. “Come on!” But no one answered.

  Fear pounded through his brain.

  So what? She could be out.

  Rapidly he punched in the number for her cell.

  The call went directly to her damned voice mail.

  He didn’t like it. There could be a million reasons she wasn’t picking up, none of which had to do with the murders that had taken place, but he was still nervous as hell.

  In his gut he knew that Faith Chastain’s death had somehow led to the recent turn of deadly events. He just didn’t know how, couldn’t yet connect the dots. All he was certain of was that Abby was involved.

  The countryside blew by in a blur of farmland and forest as he tried to keep panic at bay.

  What the hell was the connection between Faith Chastain’s tragic plunge from the third floor window of a sanitarium and the deadly events that were happening now?

  The wages of sin is death.

  Why that message? What did it mean?

  Scowling through the windshield, his eyes narrowing on the burgeoning purple-bellied clouds that scraped the horizon, he thought of the first message received at WSLJ.

  Repent.

  For what? A sin? What sin? Slowing for a corner, ignoring the crackle of the police radio, fear chasing through his bloodstream, he tried like hell to piece it together. The second message played through his head.

  Atone.

  As in make amends? For what? More transgressions? What were they? What was with all the religious references? Think! Put it together. You have to. Time is running out. And the killer is telling you something…it has to do with sin…

  Why were the two victims posed together?

  What were their sins?

  A muscle worked in his jaw and his head ached he thought so hard. He was close to the answer, he could feel it. Each victim had been picked for a reason…for his or her transgression. Against whom? The killer? Mankind? God?

  Jesus, Montoya figure this out!

  He slowed as he spied the narrow bridge dead ahead. A motorcycle sped in the opposite direction, headlight glowing like one bright eye, exhaust pipes roaring as they passed mid-center on the span.

  Montoya’s brain was still focused on the damn notes from the killer.

  The missives had been signed by Al W…no, A. L. W. There was a clue there. There had to be. What was the killer trying to say?

  The obvious answer was simple:

  L for Luke.

  A for Asa.

  W for William.

  Why not the female victims?

  No C for Courtney.

  No G for Gina.

  No M for Maria.

  Why the bridal dress on the Virgin Mary? Why all the cash strewn around Asa Pomeroy and Gina Jefferson? Why the blood red and black paint, the angry inscription on the wall of the scene with William and Maria, mother and son?

  What were their sins?

  And why was there so much rage evident at the last scene, so much anger? Such violence? When not at the others?

  “Damn it all to hell.” He flipped on his blinker and pulled into the oncoming lane, flooring it as he passed an old truck with a bumper sticker that said, Honk If You Love Jesus.

  As he swung into the right lane again, he picked up the phone to try and call Abby one more time. He needed to hear her voice, to assure himself that she was all right.

  Punching her speed dial number, he glared through the bugsplattered windshield, listening to the phone ring on the other end of the connection while his mind grappled with the puzzle of the case. Uneven pieces, sharp clues, poked at him, prodding him, taunting him that he couldn’t put it together. What the hell was the twisted son of a bitch trying to convey?

  What was the significance of yin and yang? Light and dark? Good and evil?

  No!

  Not necessarily good versus evil. More like sinner and saint!

  He nearly stood on the brakes, skidding to the side of the road. As he pulled over, the pickup that had been on his bumper honked loudly as it tore by. Montoya’s heart was beating like a jackhammer. Wildly. Crazily. Sinner and saint…Luke Gierman, the loud-mouthed adulterer and Courtney LaBelle, the virgin. Asa Pomeroy the greedy industrialist and Gina Jefferson, the philanthropist. Billy Ray Furlough, not Maria’s son…no, that was only icing on the cake. He was an angry, fire-and-brimstone preacher, railing on the wrath of God, while Maria was a soft spoken, true believer, a woman who trusted in a gentle, caring deity.

  Could that be it?

  That simple?

  His phone was still connected to his last call and Abby’s voice, instructing him to leave a message filled his ears. Oh, God, he hoped she was safe. He still felt as if she was somehow intimately involved in this horror.

  As his Mustang idled at the side of the road, he instructed Abby to call him immediately, disconnected and speed-dialed the homicide department instead.

  Seconds ticked by.

  “Zaroster.” Lynn answered on the second ring.

  “It’s Montoya. Are you near a computer?” he demanded, his mind running in circles as the first drops of rain hit the car’s windshield.

  “Yeah, right here. At my desk. Why?”

 
“I need a Google search. Or whatever search engine you use.”

  “Google. Sure…just give me a sec.”

  He heard her typing and about went out of his mind while he waited.

  “Okay, got it,” she said. “What do you want to search?”

  “Start with the Seven Deadly Sins.”

  A pause. “The Seven Deadly Sins…Okay…”

  The rain was picking up, splattering on the hood of his mustang, drizzling down the windshield. He flipped on the wipers as traffic rushed by. All the while he was impatiently listening to her type.

  “Okay, I’ve got a lot of options here.”

  “Just go to one that lists them…use a Catholic website, if you can. Read them to me.”

  “Whatever floats your boat.” More clicking. “Here we go. Got ’em,” she said.

  Adrenaline, fueled by dread, pumped through Montoya’s blood. His knuckles showed white where he gripped the steering wheel.

  “Let’s see,” she said. “We’ve got all the usual suspects here: Pride, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth and Avarice.”

  “Okay. Good,” he said, though his heart was drumming with fear. If what he was thinking was correct, if he’d finally understood what was happening, the worst was yet to come. “Years ago, when I went to Catechism, I learned about those sins. But there was more to it.”

  “Sorry, only seven.”

  “No, I mean, isn’t there something about…virtues that counterbalance the sins?”

  “Virtues?” she repeated. “You want to tell me where you’re going with this?”

  “As soon as I know,” Montoya gritted out, dreading the answer. He heard the clicking of computer keys. “There should be seven of them.”

  “Virtues…as in Our Lady of Virtues?” she said and Montoya’s fear only deepened.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, let’s see…” More typing and a pause of a few long seconds. He thought he might go out of his mind. “Oh, here it is. Well, I’ll be damned. Didn’t know they existed. Shit. Look at this.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got a list of Seven Contrary Virtues listed here, one for each of the sins.”