The Priest's Graveyard Read online

  Triumphant.

  The feeling started to fade before I entered my room on the third floor. The thoughts I’d lived with for three months started to come back, only now they had a face.

  Darby Gordon’s narrow features. Sharp chin. Beady eyes.

  There was still Bourque, but I’d always known that he hadn’t pulled the trigger himself. Now in my mind’s eye I was sure: Darby Gordon had. At the very least, he’d been involved and knew exactly who had pulled the trigger.

  I got to my room sobered by this thought, fixed myself a glass of cranberry juice, changed into my pajamas, and sat down in front of the television with my legs curled under me. I was wound up and needed to settle. There was no way I could sleep.

  Danny loved me and I had done well, but only well enough to learn who had killed Lamont. Now what?

  The late news was on, something about the Middle East. I didn’t really care about a war across the ocean; mine was here on the streets of Southern California. I was about to change the channel when the picture changed and caught my attention.

  A bomb had gone off somewhere, and a jerking camera showed people running as smoke boiled to the sky. The women and children on the screen were from Beirut, but I was seeing the two children and the woman who’d fled upstairs in Darby Gordon’s house.

  People would think nothing of blowing the responsible terrorists to kingdom come. Wasn’t that what Danny was doing? Going in and dispatching the guilty to hell if they deserved it? Defending the innocent?

  Wasn’t that the whole point of what I was doing? And it wasn’t costing the taxpayers a million dollars a bomb. People like Danny should be national heroes. They should hold parades for priests like him. We were like God’s angels.

  I realized then that what I needed to do wasn’t just about my vow to defend Lamont’s honor. It was also about those two innocent children crushed by a useless man who called himself a father. It was about Darby Gordon’s wife, Emily.

  The thoughts made my face hot. It was hard to see the television. My mind was clouded by images of Darby glaring at me, twisting my arm behind my back, breathing obscenities into my ear. The sound of his hand smacking into his wife’s face shot through my memory like the crack of a small-caliber pistol.

  My breathing was heavy. I took my glass of cranberry juice into the bedroom, set it on the nightstand, and walked into the bathroom. It had taken me three days to clean the place, and a sanitized smell still hung in the air, not quite cut by the lemon-fresh deodorizer I’d used.

  I took my time brushing my teeth, washing my face, combing my hair. But the whole time my mind was on Darby Gordon, and I was imagining what he would have done to me if I hadn’t outfoxed him.

  What was he doing to his wife right now? I imagined that his children were crying themselves to sleep, begging God to take away their daddy.

  I decided I needed a hot shower to clean the stink of Darby’s place off my skin, and I emerged fifteen minutes later, red as a lobster but squeaky fresh.

  Thoughts of Darby Gordon’s wickedness ran circles around my brain like rats on a wheel. I had to relax and turn my mind to other matters, like Bourque. Yet I was having difficulty thinking of anything but Darby Gordon.

  Spotless as a baby lamb on the outside and dressed in newly laundered pink pajamas with yellow butterflies, I climbed under my covers and tried to lose my mind in a book by Ann Rule. Perhaps if I focused on other people’s problems I could put my own out of mind.

  This might have been a mistake, because the book launched right into a scene of a woman’s carefully plotted revenge against her husband, who’d run off with all their money.

  I immediately began to think up ways to deal with Darby Gordon.

  I imagined his death and the freedom that his death would bring his wife and children in at least a dozen different ways.

  Did he have life insurance? Probably not. He didn’t care about those he left behind. But I had some money I could give them. I wouldn’t miss fifty thousand dollars.

  I had the book in my hands, reading by a single lamp’s light, and I got four pages into the chapter before realizing that I had no clue whatsoever what I’d just read. My eyes were following the words dutifully, but my mind had switched to more important matters.

  I started the chapter over, and this time the thoughts that crept into my mind were of a slightly different nature. This time I began to imagine more than Darby Gordon’s death. I began to detail clever ways that I, Renee Gilmore, could, would, or at least should kill Darby Gordon.

  Not all of them were particularly inspired, and some were outright absurd. Like renting a wood chipper and feeding his bound and gagged snake-self into the part used to shred trees and such. I’d seen this in a movie called Fargo, a detective story set in (no surprise) Fargo, North Dakota.

  But as my mind spun through various scenarios, discarding those that were either stupid or beneath me, I began to wonder what it would be like to actually go over there to that devil’s house and kill him. Just slit his throat, for example.

  Assuming I could break in.

  Did he have an alarm? It was an old house, and he didn’t strike me as the electronically savvy kind of person. Could I burrow under his foundation with a shovel and come up in the closet?

  No, I could easily go through the window in the kitchen. The kids were upstairs and used to crashing sounds, and the viper was on the other end of the house. I could break in, I was sure of it. We’d broken into Jonathan Bourque’s house, a fortress by comparison.

  I finished the whole chapter and closed the book with very little memory of what I’d read beyond the first two paragraphs. Turned the lamp off. Hugged my pillow and willed myself to go to sleep.

  It was then, in the darkness, that I relived each moment I’d spent in Darby Gordon’s house. His hot breath, his twisted grin, his terrified children, his battered wife, the cigarette butts on the carpet, the sweat on his face—all of it. The look in his eyes when I’d asked him about Lamont.

  The way that he treated his wife gnawed at me like a ferocious animal. That was me, you see, battered by Cyrus, abused and used up and left for dead before Lamont rescued me. I cringed to think of that poor woman.

  I was lying in bed trying to sleep, but my body was coiled like steel springs. I would kill Darby Gordon. I had to, if it was the last thing I did. I would kill that man who’d killed Lamont.

  My mind skipped a thought.

  What if I did kill him?

  My eyes snapped open.

  Kill him now. Tonight.

  The fist of God himself was pounding on my chest as the thoughts came alive in my mind.

  Why not? This wasn’t about Danny, it was about Lamont. I, not Danny, had to avenge Lamont’s death. This is what I was living for.

  But it was more than that. The thought of such a vile creature breathing even more breath sickened me. He was there, snoring in his bed, and Lamont was in a shallow grave somewhere. Or cut to pieces and lying at the bottom of the ocean.

  I sat up, fully awake and trembling. It was the perfect time. He would never expect me to return, not after I’d run like a mouse.

  Could I really do it? I’d never actually killed a man with my bare hands. I’d helped cut up Redding and throw him over the cliff, but only after Danny had shot him.

  A gun, I thought. I had a silencer for my gun now. Killing that viper would be a simple thing for me. Just sneak in, press the barrel up to his head, and pop. One bullet in his temple while he slept next to his wife, who was probably dreaming of ways to poison him.

  I slipped onto the floor, shaking like a twig in the wind, and I paced next to my bed. I could do this. I would delight Danny with this. I would finally be able to sleep in peace. Lamont would love me for it.

  It was this last thought that got my feet moving toward the box in my closet, where I now kept all my tools, including the gun.

  My decision was final. I was going to kill Darby Gordon, and I was going to do it tonight.


  23

  I REACHED THAT dark, nasty house at two o’clock in the morning, and it took me twenty-five minutes to leave the shadow of the tree where I’d had the cab drop me off. Because I could still back out and call Danny for advice. Because I knew I had to rid myself of my emotion first, if I wanted to avoid mistakes. Because I had to be perfect, absolutely perfect, if I really wanted to impress Danny.

  I was dressed in black, from my Puma runners to my long workout pants to my long-sleeved pullover. After the cab pulled away, I tugged a black neoprene mask over all but my eyes. Every other inch of my body was covered—no skin cells or hair would fall off me as evidence for a forensic team. Even my small leather tool bag was black.

  Finally satisfied that I was calm and that the street was empty, I casually strolled down the sidewalk toward the house I’d fled hours earlier.

  There were no streetlights. The neighbors had darkened their houses. The rain had stopped. My shoes made a sticking sound as I walked over the wet asphalt. The hot air from my lungs was already making the mask humid, like breathing in a sauna.

  But these things were distant to me. I was homed in on the Darby house. More precisely, on getting around that house, where I could work in secret.

  It was a rough neighborhood, but not even these folks could kill the greenbelt that ran behind the string of houses. My back would be covered. I had to concern myself only with being spotted from the front, and from what I could see, there was no one to spot me.

  Heart pumping like a steam engine, I cut left and sprinted on my tiptoes toward the back of the house. Careened around the corner. And came face-to-face with a high fence.

  A dog fence.

  The thought of a pet was new. I’d forgotten about the smell of dog hair in the house. But I was quick on my feet and sprang back around the corner before any canine could sound the warning.

  No sound at all. Darby had probably killed the children’s pet in a fit of rage and then barbecued it for dinner in front of them.

  Trying to still my breathing, I carefully poked my head around the corner and eyed the back of the house. An old doghouse sat in the corner of a fenced lot that could have passed for a yard if it had any lawn. Tufts of wild grass grew in spots on otherwise barren ground.

  I picked up a pebble and tossed it at the doghouse, then jerked back and listened for it to hit the roof. It missed, so I tried again and this time was rewarded with a soft plop.

  No bark. No nothing. So probably no pet. To be sure, I sent another stone sailing toward the doghouse and this time watched for any sign of a dog. There was none. Spot had been eaten by his master, and that was no surprise.

  I flung my bag over the fence and hoisted myself into the yard, thinking that if properly motivated I could vault this thing and sprint for the car.

  I had contemplated a number of ways to execute body disposal, as Danny called it, if I got to that point, and I had decided that the safest way would be in the black bags I’d brought. But the moment I landed on the bare ground and saw the shovel leaning against the back wall, a new idea popped into my head.

  I stood there for a full five minutes running this idea through my grid of possible downsides, as Danny had taught me to. My eyes remained on the doghouse, because that was the deal: What if I was to bury the body under the doghouse?

  Assuming I could move the wooden structure, which looked pretty heavy. Assuming I could dig a hole large enough to fit a body. Assuming I could cover it up properly and drag the house back over the disturbed earth.

  There were no tree roots to make digging impossible, which would probably be the case out in the greenbelt. No wild animals to dig up the body. Even if the house was eventually sold and the doghouse tossed, no one would know there was a body buried there. Even if they did eventually find the body after years of rain washed away the dirt or something, they would only assume Darby Gordon had been knocked off by some nasty criminal, he being one himself.

  I was not a nasty criminal. I was God’s merciful angel. Danny, my priest, my savior, my new soul mate, had his own private graveyard. Now I would add to it here, in San Pedro. The idea was intoxicating.

  I grabbed the shovel and ran over to the doghouse at the back corner. A blanket of clouds provided a cover of darkness. If I was caught, I could throw the bag over the back fence, leap over, and vanish into the greenbelt.

  The doghouse wasn’t anchored into the ground, and although it took even more muscle and huffing and puffing than I had expected, I managed to push/pull/drag it to one side. The earth was hard, and there was no grass to keep the base from sliding.

  The hole was another matter because, although it was clay and dug up quite easily, I realized that after I put a body in the mix, the dirt wouldn’t all fit back into the hole. So I began to toss every other shovelful over the back fence.

  A man like Darby Gordon would notice the fresh dirt strewn along the ground beyond his fence, but with any luck he wouldn’t be around. His wife and children might see it but wouldn’t likely make the connection. If they did, they would only rejoice.

  I pulled my ski mask up so I could breathe, then dug for half an hour, until my back was breaking and my palms were blistering. Without my gloves I wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes. I was a puff cake, not a construction worker, albeit a puff cake that could cut life with a knife when needed.

  My mind spun with each thrust of the shovel. If Lamont could only see me now. I missed him terribly.

  Would anyone believe me if I told them I was digging for treasure at three o’clock in the morning?

  I loved Danny, but I missed Lamont. I could do both, right? And I could kill Darby Gordon for both of them.

  The hole wasn’t long enough to lay a body in, but I had to keep to the doghouse dimensions, so I went deep instead of long—a good three feet deep. Satisfied that I could get Darby into the grave if I broke him up a bit, I pulled my mask back down, grabbed my black bag, and ran to the kitchen window.

  I was still clean, see? I could still make a run for it. But I didn’t because I didn’t want to. A part of me was trembling, but a part of me would die if I didn’t see this through. The feeling wasn’t so different from how I’d felt searching for a fix when I was addicted to a different kind of high.

  The thought stopped me for a moment as I stood at the window with the glass cutter in my hand. I had tasted the blood of vengeance once, and I wanted it again.

  Was a good person’s addiction to doing good, bad?

  I might have just broken the glass with a towel wrapped around my hand like they did in movies, hoping no one would hear, but Danny had explained the foolishness of it. Instead I took the time to painstakingly cut a one-foot hole in the bottom of the glass, wide enough for me to reach in and release both locks that fastened the window to the sill.

  With a single shove, the window jerked up, gaping eighteen inches at the bottom. I stood, listening. I heard the distant hum of a transformer; a ticking sound that came from inside the house, maybe a clock; my own breathing. Nothing else. No sound of Darby creeping around to intercept me.

  At the moment, my crime was limited to property damage, but the second I climbed through the window I would be guilty of breaking and entering. So what? Neither compared to cutting up a body and throwing it in the Pacific Ocean. I was ready.

  I withdrew my silenced nine-millimeter gun from the black bag, shoved the firearm behind my waist, hoisted myself into the open window, and slid over the sill onto the floor of the kitchen’s dinette.

  I did not land in perfect silence. My gun fell out and thumped on the linoleum floor.

  To me it sounded as if a bomb had been detonated in the house—there was no way Darby could sleep through such a racket! He was probably grabbing his shotgun and rushing out to shoot me.

  I snatched up my gun and scrambled to the edge of the kitchen cabinets. I crouched there, trying not to breathe, with my weapon cocked and ready to fire the moment he stepped out. A dozen thoughts crashed through my head,
all of them about one kind of disastrous ending or another.

  It took a full minute, which felt more like ten, before I realized Darby had either slept through my thumping or was waiting for me in the bedroom.

  Once you go, go. Danny’s voice came back to me. Keep them off balance. It’s all about maintaining the advantage, surprise, illusion, sleight of hand. Speed and stealth are your closest friends.

  I’d already blown the stealth bit, and I wasn’t doing so well with the speed thing, but I could change both now, right?

  So I moved forward in a crouch like a ninja, gun ahead of me. I crouched/tiptoed/rushed out of the kitchen and through the living room, which was barely lit by one night-light on the far wall.

  The bedroom door was open. I poked my head around the corner, gun by my chin now. The room was dark, but I could make out one lump curled up and another sprawled out, snoring softly. That would be the beast, lost in nasty dreams.

  I froze by the door, knowing it was a bad time to freeze up, but I couldn’t help it. I was now guilty of property damage, and breaking and entering, but I still hadn’t done the deed. And doing the deed wasn’t going to be as simple as shooting Darby in the head and running. The knowledge in that head was too valuable to waste. Killing him outright would be unforgivable.

  Danny favored drugs. Incapacitating the target was the best option, he said, and who could disagree? I’d become fascinated with the idea that a simple needle could reduce any thug to a lump of flesh, and I practiced with a poor cantaloupe until Danny was satisfied I could sling a syringe with the best of them.

  His drug of choice was propofol, which when injected directly into the bloodstream would typically render any subject unconscious in seconds.

  Still crouching, I hurried around the bed to where Emily was curled up in a dead sleep. Kneeling so that only my head poked above the mattress, I set my gun down on the carpet, withdrew one of two syringes in my pocket, and removed the protective sleeve from the needle.