The Soul Catcher

  Then she turned and left.

  CHAPTER 48

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Maria Leonetti took a shortcut through Boston Common, wishing she had brought a pair of running shoes. But she hated wearing them with her expensive suits and thought the other women at the brokerage firm gave up a piece of their credibility as soon as they put on their Nikes and Reeboks at the end of the day. After all, none of the male brokers changed their shoes just to walk home. Why couldn’t women simply buy comfortable shoes? And why the hell couldn’t shoe designers create something both stylish and comfortable?

  She noticed a crowd at the fountain and wondered what kind of celebration could be taking place on a Tuesday afternoon. The day had been unseasonably warm, bringing out inline skaters, joggers and all sorts of riffraff, too. This group of rowdy young guys looked like a fraternity party. Maybe college kids were out already for the Thanksgiving holiday. She probably should have taken another trail, but she was exhausted. Her feet hurt. All she wanted to do was get home, snuggle with Izzy, her calico cat, and veg out. Maybe put on an old Cary Grant movie and make popcorn. That was as much of a party as she wanted.

  Suddenly, she felt someone grab her elbow.

  “Hey,” she yelled, and jerked away. Before she could turn around, two men were on either side of her, each grabbing an arm. One of them pulled at her purse, ripping the strap and tossing it to the ground. Jesus! They weren’t interested in robbing her. A fresh panic took hold.

  “Hey! Look what we found,” one of them shouted to the others.

  “Get your fucking hands off me,” Maria screamed, pulling and tugging as they dragged her into the crowd.

  Arms and hands and faces came at her from all directions. They were laughing and egging one another on, chanting, “Bitch, bitch.”

  She screamed and kicked, losing a shoe but connecting with one groin. It only infuriated them into holding her feet as well as her arms. Someone sprayed her with beer, dousing her face and blouse. Then she heard the rips of her clothing, and she screamed louder. No one seemed to care—or could they just not hear over the laughter and yelling? Hands squeezed her breasts and ran up her thighs. Fingers poked and prodded into her underpants, and soon they were being ripped off her, too. She could see a glint of a camera lens and then saw its owner, pushing between shoulders to get a better view.

  Oh, dear God. They were going to kill her. They were going to rape her and then they were going to kill her. And it would all be on film for someone’s entertainment.

  She clawed at their faces and got slapped so hard, blood trickled down her mouth. She managed to pull one hand free, and clung to her bra as the rest of her blouse was ripped away. Her shoes were gone. She could feel her panty hose shredded around her ankles, where they were using them to hold her down. They gripped her so tight she could already feel the bruises and her skin rubbed raw.

  “Hey, here comes another bitch.”

  One by one, they let go. They left her as suddenly as they had attacked, rising up and moving like a swarm. She lay heaped on the grass in only her bra and her skirt, which was slit up the side seam, hanging together only by the waistband. Her underpants were gone. She hurt everywhere and couldn’t see through the tears. She wanted to curl up and die. Then she heard the woman’s scream and realized they had found another victim. Her stomach knotted up and she felt dizzy, but she knew she needed to leave before they decided to come back to her.

  She tried to stand, but her knees collapsed as her head began to spin. Another hand grabbed her arm, and she jerked away, falling back on the grass.

  “No, wait. I just want to help.”

  She stared up at the young man, but the spinning in her head wouldn’t let her eyes focus. All she could see was that he wore a blue baseball cap, jeans and a T-shirt that smelled of beer. Oh, God! He was one of them. She tried to crawl away, but he took her by the arm and lifted her to her feet.

  “We need to get you away from here.” He was holding her up and wrapping her in a scratchy jacket.

  She had no energy left to fight him. She walked as best she could as he led her up the trail and away from the crowd, away from the laughter and that continuous scream for help that made her sick to her stomach. They barely got to the edge of the park before she pulled away from him, retching and vomiting behind a nearby bush. When she turned around, he was gone.

  Maria sat down, safely hidden behind the trees, trying to calm her stomach and catch her breath. The rumble of nearby traffic seemed to soothe her, as if reminding her that civilization was, indeed, close by. That she hadn’t fallen off the edge of the world. A breeze chilled her wet body, and she could smell the stale beer that had doused her skin. It made her gag again, but she was able to contain the urge to vomit. She hugged herself, listening to the sound of car horns and the hydraulic screech of brakes, listening for anything that would help shut out the sounds of laughter, the chants of “bitch, bitch” and the poor woman’s stifled cries. Why couldn’t anyone else hear that? Why wasn’t anyone stopping them? Had the whole world suddenly gone mad?

  She pushed her arms into the jacket sleeves and discovered most of the buttons were missing. Still it was better than nothing. It smelled of peppermint. She dug into the pockets and found two quarters, a McDonald’s napkin and half a roll of peppermint Life Savers. God, her fingers were still shaking so bad, it took a concentrated effort to unwrap one of the mints and pop it into her mouth. Hopefully it would settle her stomach. As soon as her knees were strong enough, she’d get out of the park, onto the street, and find a cop. Where the hell were the cops, anyway? It was getting dark. There was usually at least one hanging around in the evenings.

  Then from behind her, something came over her head and around her neck. Maria clawed at it. It dug into the skin of her throat. She gasped for air, kicking and twisting her body. Her fingers tried to get hold of the cord. God! It was so tight. It was already embedded into her neck, so deep that her fingernails were ripping at her own skin as she tried to dig it out.

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t pull away. My God, he was strong. And now he was pulling her back farther into the trees, dragging her, because her feet wouldn’t work. She had no energy left.

  Air. She needed air. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t even see straight. Her head was spinning again, a blur of trees and grass and sky. She felt herself slipping away. She could no longer hear the chants or the laughter or even the woman’s screams. Where were the sounds of traffic? Why did everything sound so muffled? So far away? The cord drew tighter, and soon she couldn’t hear anything at all.

  CHAPTER 49

  Justin’s hands were still shaking when he got back to the bus. He hadn’t bothered to wait for the rest of them. He still couldn’t believe this was what Father had meant by an initiation trip. He imagined it to be some test of survival like his so-called week alone in the woods. Or some marathon lecture series like their weekend revival meetings. But, Jesus! He had never imagined something like this.

  He felt sick to his stomach, remembering that poor woman vomiting and all those screams. He yanked off his cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. The bus was empty. Thank God! Though he could see Dave, their driver, inside the McDonald’s, keeping an eye on things as he probably wolfed down an illicit Big Mac.

  Justin slumped into one of the seats, crossing his arms over his chest and trying to stop shaking. He was sweating up a storm, so why was he shivering like he was cold? Fuck! He couldn’t get those screams out of his head. Those poor women. That wasn’t the way his grandfather had taught him to treat women. Even his dad could be an asshole sometimes, but he was good to Justin’s mom. No woman deserved to be treated that way. He didn’t care what the hell Father’s instructions were.

  While he handed out Quarter Pounders and beer, Brandon had told them that they were about to learn an important lesson. All Justin had cared about was that finally he had some decent food and that being a warrio
r wasn’t such a bad thing. He’d hardly paid attention to what Brandon was saying. He must have eaten three Quarter Pounders and drunk four or five beers.

  He had been feeling a pleasant buzz by the time Brandon led them to the park, where he continued his lecture about how they needed to put all bitches in their place, make them understand that men were still in power. He said women were the reason everything was going so haywire in the world. Women thought they didn’t need men, were off being lesbos, having babies on their own, taking good jobs away from family men and then crying to the government to protect them. The sluts and whores were responsible for spreading AIDS. They needed to be punished. They needed to be taught a lesson.

  They sprayed the first woman who came by with beer, and Justin remembered laughing at her. By the third woman, they were grabbing and fondling and ripping. Her screams shook Justin as if waking him from a nightmare. He couldn’t believe what he was doing. That was when he started to think about Alice. What if Alice had been one of the women walking through that park? What if the others knew about her past? Jesus! Would they swarm her like a pack of wolves?

  No one had seen him slip behind the trees to vomit up all those precious hamburgers. He stayed there, and when they were finished with the third woman and heading for a fourth, Justin helped her away, trying to make up for his part in the nightmare. When he knew she was safe, he left, sneaking back to the bus, still hearing the laughter and the screams ringing in his ears.

  He didn’t want to think about it. He brought his knees up and hugged them to his chest. He needed to think about something, anything else.

  He had only been to Boston once before when Eric was still at Brown. It had been one of their last family trips together. They had stayed at the Radisson. He and Eric had even gotten a room to themselves. Their dad let them order room service, which blew them away because he’d always been so tight with money.

  They spent one day at a Red Sox game, then the Metropolitan Museum to satisfy his mom. But even that didn’t suck. It had actually been a good time, one of the few that hadn’t ended in a huge argument of some kind. It had left Justin with good feelings about Boston; feelings that now were replaced with sounds of women’s screams for help and the smell of warm beer.

  He jumped off the seat and into the aisle, pulling off his T-shirt, wadding it up and kicking it under seat. Then he peeled off the rest of his clothes until he was standing in the bus aisle, wearing only his jockey shorts. That was when he saw Brandon standing in the bus’s door, staring at him. But instead of getting angry, Brandon started laughing.

  “I knew it,” he finally said as Justin wrestled back into his blue jeans. “I knew you didn’t have the stomach for this. You’re a coward, just like your fucking brother, Eric. I need to get back and finish things like a real man.”

  Then he turned and left, heading toward the park.

  CHAPTER 50

  Calm. He needed to stay calm and let the liquid course through his veins. Let it do its magic. Already he could feel its strength, its power.

  Not that he needed much physical strength. The woman was small, easy to drag. And with the noise and excitement still going on close by, no one would notice the rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs.

  But he needed to hurry. He needed to find a more isolated area. The sun was sinking behind the buildings. He didn’t have much time to set up, to get ready. Tonight would be different. He could feel it. Tonight would be the night. Somehow he just knew it.

  He stopped, turned and waited while he stared at the woman’s half-naked body, leaves and brush dragging along between her legs. He smiled when he finally saw her exposed chest move just slightly, shallow breaths, barely noticeable. Oh, good. She was still alive. Then he continued dragging her. Yes, tonight he felt quite certain it would happen. He would finally see it tonight.

  CHAPTER 51

  Maggie drove with the windows rolled down, hoping it would squelch the churning in the pit of her stomach. As she drove, she tried to make sense of all that she had learned from the woman called Eve about the Reverend Joseph Everett. She needed to prepare herself before she confronted her mother. She’d need to arm herself with information for when her mother started to defend the man, because Maggie knew her mother would defend him.

  She tried to put aside the horrible images Eve had conjured up. Instead, she should concentrate on the facts. Most of her arsenal of facts was general biographical stuff. As a young man, Everett had been kicked out of the army, an honorable discharge with no further explanation. There was no police record, despite the rape charge that was later dropped by the journalism student herself. At thirty-five he ran for the Virginia state senate and lost. Then three years later he started the Church of Spiritual Freedom, a nonprofit organization that allowed him to amass stockpiles of tax-free donations. Everett finally found his calling, but there seemed to be no information on where or if he had actually been ordained as a minister.

  In less than ten short years, the Church of Spiritual Freedom claimed more than five hundred members with almost two hundred of them living on a compound he had built in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Ironically, the area was only a few miles from where the journalism student had been raped twenty-seven years earlier. Everett had either been innocent and had nothing to hide, or perhaps, Maggie couldn’t help thinking, he was superstitious and didn’t think lightning could strike in the same place twice.

  If it was the latter, he had good reason to believe it. In the past ten years, he and his church had not been in any kind of trouble with the law—no IRS audits, no weapons violations, no building permit or zoning violations. The illegal-weapons summon at the Massachusetts cabin was the first violation, and even that could only loosely be connected to Everett’s church. In fact, everything seemed to be going quite nicely for the good reverend. He had even made some close and powerful friends in Congress, permitting him to buy a parcel of government land in Colorado for a sinfully low price. If things were going so well, why did he want to uproot and move to Colorado?

  Maggie wasn’t certain what her mother’s involvement was with Everett and his so-called church. One thing Maggie did feel certain about, however, was that the man could be a time bomb waiting to explode. And despite only circumstantial evidence, she knew he was somehow involved in, at least, Ginny Brier’s death and possibly the floater in North Carolina. It was too much of a coincidence that these women died while Everett’s rallies were taking place just footsteps away. As for the nameless transient, well, she was still a mystery.

  The crisp autumn air chilled her, but she kept the windows down. She took deep breaths, filling her lungs with the scent of pine and the exhaust fumes of the traffic on I-95. She’d need to have all her senses on alert and in overdrive for this mission. Even without a confrontation, being in the same room with her mother was difficult enough. There were too many memories. Too much past left behind, and that’s just the way Maggie preferred it.

  It had been more than a year since she had visited her mother’s apartment, although she doubted her mother would remember that visit. How could she remember? She had been passed out for most of it. Now Maggie wondered how she would begin to explain this visit. What did she think she could do, just drop by and say, “Gee, Mom, I was passing through and thought I’d stop and see how you were? Oh, and by the way, did you realize your precious Reverend Everett may be a dangerous maniac?” No, somehow she didn’t think that would get her anywhere.

  Maggie tried to put aside what she had learned in the FBI file and what she had just learned from Eve. Instead, she tried to remember everything in the past year that her mother may have told her about Reverend Joseph Everett. She was embarrassed to admit that she hadn’t paid much attention. In the beginning she had simply been relieved that there was someone else to watch over her mother. Months went by without a suicide attempt, and Maggie hoped that the woman had finally found a less destructive addiction. Perhaps she had finally found a way to get the attention she so
craved, and it didn’t include a trip to the ER.

  Later, when she discovered that her mother had stopped drinking, Maggie was skeptical. It seemed too good to be true. There had to be a catch. And, of course, there was one. The sudden sobriety had changed the habits but hadn’t changed Kathleen O’Dell’s personality. She was still as selfish, needy and narrow-minded as she had always been, only now Maggie couldn’t explain it away as drunken drivel.

  It didn’t make sense that her mother had suddenly found God. Maggie could count on one hand the times her mother had insisted they attend mass. Her entire childhood, she couldn’t remember her mother doing or saying anything that could remotely be misconstrued as religious.

  The only time Maggie remembered her mother mentioning religion was when she was drunk, often times joking that she was a recovering Catholic from which there was no cure. Then she would snort and laugh, telling anyone who would listen that being a little bit Catholic was like being a little bit pregnant.

  For Kathleen O’Dell, being a Catholic was something she had held on to simply as a party favor. Which led Maggie to believe that Everett’s Bible-thumping would probably be lost on the woman. In the last several months, she had not heard her mother suddenly start spouting off psalms or scripture. There certainly hadn’t been a miraculous religious conversion. At least not one Maggie could see.

  What she did see was the same compulsive, judgmental, addictive woman finally finding someone or something to blame for all her hardships and bad luck. And Reverend Everett provided for her the sinister, evil culprit in the form of the United States government, a faceless entity, an easy target as long as Kathleen O’Dell could reason that her daughter was not a part of that entity.