The Priest's Graveyard Read online

  For her, it had never happened, and anyone who suggested it had might become her bitter enemy. This was how the mind protected itself.

  What did that beast do to her?

  No, he wouldn’t go to Renee now. Instead, he would retrieve his tools, go to the glass house in Malibu, and see for himself. Then, no matter what he found, he would rush to Renee and hold her.

  If he found that she had been abused, he would never tell her. How could he?

  26

  I HAD BECOME slack and dirty over the two previous weeks, being so caught up in my new life with Danny. In fact, I’d only cleansed once a day at the most, even skipping a few days here and there because the thought of vomiting up impurities—​Lamont’s word for unsuitable or extra food—​had somehow become less urgent to me than it had been when he was alive.

  Part of the duty of any good wife was to make sure she took care of her body and didn’t become a slob, Lamont used to say. And he was right. Keeping the body clean and healthy was as important as keeping the house or the mind clean.

  With his patient help, I’d become nearly perfect at doing all three. I have to admit that learning to think Lamont’s way was difficult for me at first. I don’t remember how difficult, because the change happened over many months, and the blue pills that Lamont gave me to help wean me off the heroin had fogged my mind.

  I learned that everything in life—preferences, love, beauty—was a matter of perception. That’s what he always used to say. Pain, ugliness, hate—the mind could block anything out with enough encouragement. Mind over matter.

  For example, although I once loved meat, I learned that I could love tofu just as much if I just tried hard enough.

  But I hadn’t been taking my blue pills for over three months now. And Danny didn’t seem the least bit interested in whether or not I ate a certain way or cleansed the impurities from my body. I once asked him if he thought I was getting fat because I’d gained two pounds. He only laughed at me. It took me a few minutes to realize that he wasn’t mocking me but actually thought I was being silly.

  That was the difference between Lamont and Danny. Lamont knew what was good for the soul, the body, and the mind. He was the one who had taught me what was right and what was wrong.

  Danny knew which people needed to be judged. But unlike Lamont, he wasn’t caught up in rules and all the little laws.

  Still, I owed all that I was to Lamont, so after skipping two full days of cleansing I walked into my bathroom on Thursday afternoon, stuck my finger down my throat, and cleansed myself of all impurities.

  It was like saying a confession, cleansing myself inside and out. I stood from my knees, flushed the toilet, scrubbed out my mouth with my toothbrush, and left feeling much better.

  This was the third day after I had broken into the Gordon house in San Pedro and killed the monster who’d preyed on his wife and children. With each passing day, my craving to get on with it, to deal with Bourque, grew.

  I know I’ve said this before, but I really felt like I had in the old days of my addiction to heroin, only in the best of ways. The fix is good, but after a few days I was dying for another one.

  Not that I was dying to kill. Please, no, that wasn’t it at all. If I had felt that way, I might have been concerned for myself. Danny talked about how important it was to avoid becoming pathological, like a pathological liar or serial killer who can’t control his need to lie or kill.

  Not at all. If anything, Danny and I were the exact opposite, carefully controlling our need to do what was right for the sake of others, not ourselves.

  Still, I was feeling more eager to get back to Bourque as the hours ticked by. It’s what I now did, right? I was this new creature, and I needed to act like it.

  Which is why—after cleansing that afternoon on the third day, after calling Danny at home and at his office without reaching him, after sipping a glass of prune juice for an hour, after vacuuming and scrubbing the tiny floor in the Embassy Suites, after calling the church again and learning that Danny had left for the day—I decided that I would visit the Wells Fargo bank building downtown.

  That’s all it was supposed to be, a simple trip past the Bourque Foundation’s offices. Going by wasn’t exactly going after Bourque, which I had no interest in doing without Danny anyway. But after three months of dogging Lamont’s killer, I couldn’t just sit still, drinking prune juice.

  So I dressed in my black skirt and a white collared blouse with short sleeves, slipped into my only pair of heels, and picked up my key card. I had come a long way since the days of flannel pajamas and slippers.

  Danny wouldn’t mind, right? He never told me where I could go or what I could eat—that was Lamont.

  I paused at the door, then headed back into the bedroom for my bag. I was going out to a place of some danger, it would be best if I took my kit out with me. The black leather bag held my silenced gun in a custom case that Danny had made me, two knives, some nylon rope, my gloves, lock picks, and a variety of other tools that might prove useful. The basic tools that anyone in my position needed to do their job correctly.

  The weight of the bag in my hand gave me some comfort walking down the hall. If they only knew. But who would suspect a short, thin blonde dressed in proper business attire as having any thoughts besides impressing her boss on her mind?

  Well, maybe seducing their boss. But certainly not killing him.

  I couldn’t take a cab. That might have been how Redding found me the first time. But I’d become quite familiar with the bus routes and knew I could get downtown by taking two buses. It would take me longer, but better to be safe. Besides, I had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with.

  I caught the first bus a block down on Anaheim and sat in the back with my black bag in my lap. The trip took almost an hour with all the stops and the switch on the Pacific Coast Highway, and the whole time I couldn’t help but worry that I was being foolish. I really didn’t know what I was hoping to accomplish.

  I was practicing. That’s what I kept telling myself. I was just putting the miles in, learning to move around in full gear. But I still felt awkward, riding around in a bus, so out of place in my business attire.

  It was almost four o’clock by the time I stepped off the bus in front of the Wells Fargo building on Ocean Boulevard. There I was, standing on the corner with my bag hanging in my hand, blending in like a wart on a witch’s nose.

  I almost turned around and climbed back on the bus. I should have. If I hadn’t come so far, I would have. But I didn’t.

  Instead I walked down the sidewalk, eyeing the towering bank building across the street. My own history with the Bourque Foundation edged back into my mind: the hours I’d spent casing the place. The run-in with the receptionist on the top floor. My abduction at the Hilton. The night Danny had come into my life.

  Breaking into Jonathan Bourque’s home.

  Cutting up Simon Redding’s body.

  Shooting Darby Gordon.

  I stopped and stared, suddenly unconcerned about whether I fit in with the other pedestrians on the sidewalk. Because it all came down to that top floor, didn’t it? It had been more than three months since that monster had killed Lamont, and I still hadn’t come face-to-face with him.

  And I probably wouldn’t anytime soon. Danny wasn’t going to let me. Every time I mentioned Bourque, he changed the subject. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him; I did. But my needs were different from Danny’s when it came to confronting and killing Lamont’s killer.

  If I was infected with any pathological disease, it was my vow to honor Lamont.

  I should cross the street now and take the elevator up to the top floor and shoot Jonathan Bourque.

  I should sneak into the parking garage, find the black Mercedes that Bourque was driven around in, then shoot him when he made his way to the car.

  I should take out one of the hundred-dollar bills in my bag and give it to a messenger to deliver a note to the offices on the top f
loor: I’m gunning for you, you viper.

  I should…

  My thoughts were cut short by the appearance of a black Mercedes. The one I had just thought about.

  Jonathan Bourque’s ride nosed out of the underground garage and came to a stop directly across the street.

  I might have turned and walked away then, but I’d frozen solid. I couldn’t even move my eyes off the car. Its left-turn signal was blinking, left, left, left, and I was staring right into the front window.

  For the first time in my life I saw Jonathan Bourque in the flesh, sitting in the rear seat, talking on a phone. I was completely unprepared for the storm that rushed my mind.

  If the traffic had been any thinner, the Mercedes might have turned and been gone before I could move. But the car waited for a count of ten, maybe twenty, and it was still facing me when a taxi emptied its fare at the curb beside me.

  The Mercedes started to move and suddenly so did I. Straight to the Yellow Cab. Without waiting for the driver to acknowledge me, I pulled the back door open and slid in with my bag.

  “Follow that car,” I said, jabbing my finger at the Mercedes.

  The driver, a burly man with a beer gut, twisted in his seat. “I need an address.”

  “No, you need money,” I snapped. “And I have two hundred dollars that says you can stay on the tail of my husband’s car without being obvious about it.”

  He glanced at the Mercedes now pulling away, then back at me. A thin grin pulled at his mouth. “That bad, huh?”

  “That bad.”

  He flipped his meter off, signaled to enter traffic, and eyed his side mirror. “Strap in, honey.”

  Danny pulled up to the house by the sea in Malibu at four forty-five, parked his car at the top of the driveway, and stepped out. The address of the foreclosure was a matter of public record and had been easy to find. Dark storm clouds were gathering on the horizon over the Pacific Ocean. It was the fourth day in a row that had either brought or threatened rain.

  Before him on the edge of a short cliff, which met a rocky shore twenty feet below, stood a white stucco mansion with a red-tile roof. A three-car garage jutted out to the left of the main house with a sloping driveway and apron bordered by tall, swaying palm trees. The blue-and-white sign in the front lawn announced that the house was still for sale.

  A lone seagull cawed as it drifted overhead, eyeing the property.

  Danny studied the house, taking note of the windows, which were all shut and blocked by interior blinds. Americans were obsessed with privacy, cocooning themselves in brick and mortar that hid their passions, their habits.

  Their sins.

  No one would drive by this mansion in its neighborhood of similar mansions and think, Inside that house there is a woman being held captive to serve a psychopath.

  If it was true…

  Danny stood still, pushing away the dread that had haunted him since leaving Bourque’s office. He’d seen his share of horrors, but there was nothing quite so disturbing as the violation of unwitting innocence.

  Bourque could have been playing him. He desperately hoped so. More than once he’d almost turned the car around and headed home, wanting to avoid the prospect of finding anything ugly here, in this house. But now here he stood at the top of the sloping driveway, feeling like a fifteen-year-old boy returning home to find it had become a slaughterhouse.

  His memory of that day, brought to life by the prospect of what he would find inside of this house by the sea, made him want to cry.

  Holding his bag loosely in his right hand, he walked down the driveway and up to the front door, a large wooden entry with decorative panels, now secured with a combination lockbox that held a key for Realtors.

  It took him only a minute with his picks to spring the lockbox, withdraw the house key, and open the front door.

  The house sucked in fresh air as the door’s seal broke. And then Danny stepped into Lamont Myers’s house by the sea.

  27

  WE DROVE WEST. I don’t remember the street names or the highway we entered then exited ten minutes later. My eyes were glued to the back of the black Mercedes, and my mind was crammed with Danny’s voice: Stop it, Renee. Tell the driver to make a U-turn. Drive back home. Stop a few blocks away from the Embassy Suites. You don’t want any cabdriver to know where you’re staying.

  I sat in the middle of the backseat and watched the car ahead of us, hugging my bag with both arms.

  “He’s headed into a secure warehouse district,” the driver said. “You sure you want me to follow him in?”

  The large steel warehouses were lined up in rows like self-storage units, only much larger. Did I know this place? “Yes. Follow him.”

  “Because I’m just saying, not too many cabs come this way. We could be spotted.”

  “No! He can’t see us, stay back!”

  The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m okay. Yes.” But my tight voice didn’t sound okay, and it made me wonder if he might realize he’d picked up a serial killer and feel compelled to call the cops.

  “You can’t call the cops,” I said. “Please, it’s okay. He’s got a thing going and I need to see for myself, that’s all.”

  “No need to explain, honey. I’m just being sure. Looks like they’re going in through the gate. I can’t drive in there.”

  The Mercedes pulled up to a steel gate, where a security guard was waving them through. Was it normal to have security at a fenced warehouse complex? ’Course it was. With Bourque it always was.

  Pins and needles pricked my hands, because I was at one of those crucial junctures Danny talked about. If I lost Bourque now, I could either go home (which I just couldn’t) or get the driver to wait for him out here (which would surely get us noticed).

  But following them in was like walking into a lion’s cage.

  “You can’t get in?” I asked. “I’ll pay you more.”

  “Even if we did go in, someone’s going to notice. Look, I brought you this far—”

  “Another two hundred dollars,” I interrupted. Something about this place struck me as strange. There was something I should know but couldn’t remember. “If you can get in and park close, behind a building or something, and wait for me, I’ll pay you five hundred.”

  “It’s secured—”

  “A thousand,” I blurted. “I have it right here. Please, just try.”

  He eyed me. “A thousand?”

  “A thousand if you get me back out.”

  “That’s not what you said.”

  “Okay, two thousand if you can get me back out and where I need to go.”

  “Where’s that?”

  The Mercedes disappeared around a warehouse to our left.

  “Just go, you’re going to lose him!”

  He hesitated only a moment, then turned the cab and gunned for the gate just now beginning to close. “Two thousand, honey. Don’t forget that.”

  I’d forgotten it already. My mind was on this warehouse complex, and suddenly I knew why it struck a bell in my brain. This was where I’d climbed out of the trunk and made my escape in the blue overalls. Only it hadn’t been fenced then.

  “Tell them you’re here for the Bourque Foundation,” I said, reaching over the front seat, nudging the driver in his shoulder. “Tell him.”

  “No guarantees this is gonna work.”

  “Just use that name. The Bourque Foundation. Got it?”

  “The Bourque Foundation.”

  I noticed the driver’s name for the first time. His face stared at me from a protective plastic sleeve below his radio. RAYMOND PAULSON.

  Raymond slowed at the entrance, rolled down his window, and spoke to the guard. “Delivery for Bourque,” he said. “I have a daughter here who wants to surprise her father.”

  The guard glanced back at me and I flashed him something of a smile, but I’m sure I looked more like an alien baring its teeth. Still, the guard waved us thr
ough.

  “Where do you want me to wait?”

  “Find the car.”

  He followed the route the Mercedes had taken, up the center then to the left, just in time to see Bourque’s car hook a right at the far end.

  “I don’t want to get too close.” Sweat beaded his forehead.

  “I just need to see where he parks. Don’t lose him!”

  In my frantic state of mind I had only one thought: Bourque’s men had brought Lamont’s car here. Other than his money, which had made it possible for me to live these past months, I hadn’t seen anything directly connected to Lamont. The urgency to know or touch or smell something connected to Lamont was irresistible. For all I knew, he was in that warehouse, bound and caged, but alive. Irrational, I know, but that was all I could think.

  I felt like a hound closing in on its prey. I had to at least see which warehouse belonged to Bourque so that I could come back later.

  The Mercedes had parked next to the second warehouse on the left, and as soon as Raymond saw it, he brought the cab to a halt.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “It’s right there.” He had his eyes fixed on the car. “You want to get out?”

  “Here?”

  “I don’t know, you’re calling the shots.”

  “Just drive by slowly.”

  He hesitated, then pulled up.

  “Not too slow,” I said. “They’ll notice.”

  The car surged forward.

  “Not too fast.”

  “Make up your mind!”

  Our lives hang in the balance of unpredictable situations, Danny had said to me once. One minute you’re driving down the road whistling a tune, the next moment the car right in front of you spins out of control and crashes. How you prepare for those unpredictable occurrences determines whether you live or die. Always leave an empty lane to your right or left for escape.

  Preparation was why you trained. It’s why you took your time, approaching a target only when you had complete control of the situation.