The Priest's Graveyard Page 27

  I started down the hall. But I’d left the door open behind me. Dirt would get in. Thieves and murderers.

  The thought was ridiculous, but that didn’t stop me from thinking it. Or from turning back and closing the door.

  Thunk.

  Once more I was sealed in the house of the law. I could feel Lamont in the air that I breathed.

  Heart hammering, I hurried to the open bedroom door and peered cautiously around the corner, half expecting to see Danny sitting on my bed or in the corner, although I don’t know why. He would have answered my call if he were up here on this floor. He had to be in the basement.

  My pink bed and the moose head with big eyes was there in my bedroom. The sight of it was so painful that my head spun—a physical reaction to my loss. An image of me purging in the toilet crashed through my mind and for a moment I thought I might throw up.

  “Danny?”

  The house was quiet. So quiet.

  I tiptoed out to the living room and saw that the kitchen was dark, as was the wall of electronics that would normally be lit up with amber and green lights. But there was a soft glow at the bottom of the stairwell to my right.

  Danny was in the basement. In Lamont’s bedroom. Maybe in his trophy room.

  I didn’t know why that last thought flushed me with panic. Well, yes…I did know. Lamont’s inner sanctum was very special to him. No one, including me, was ever allowed inside his trophy room without an express invitation from him. Even though Lamont was gone, Danny had broken the rules.

  Instead of calling out again, I went down the stairs on my toes, trying not to make any sound. I had to warn Danny.

  I had to get him out before it was too late.

  30

  THE BREW THAT triggers the most potent of human emotions is sometimes as simple as death. More often it’s a complex cocktail of events that leaves a wife curled up catatonic on her bed, or a husband slumped in the corner, weeping.

  For Danny, the convergence of events that led to a shift in his paradigm was fairly simple. He’d become that boy of fifteen again, crushed by his failure to stop terrible injustice. He hadn’t been able to save his own mother and sisters from brutal death.

  He wasn’t able now to save Renee, either. They were all doves in his mind. Perfect innocence violated by evil men.

  Such stark proof of Renee’s tortured past was compounded by the fact that she had blindly followed her master’s laws, thinking it was the right thing to do. Lamont was Renee’s religion, and his laws had delivered her here, to this pit of restraint. Like all devoted followers, Renee hadn’t even known that law was killing her.

  And there was nothing he could do to stop it. His own attempt to be the hand of God, to compensate for his failure to save his mother, was itself a failure. That realization had come into full view here, in this basement.

  Have you ever been tempted to judge, Father? The reverend mother’s words were simply an echo from history, but they pounded in his mind as if they’d been newly formed and spoken for the first time.

  Judge not, lest you be judged.

  Your judgment will not make the world a better place. Only love can do that. Only grace.

  The convergence of it all—his family, Renee, innocence, judgment—made that brew erupt in his chest like a chemist’s misguided recipe for catastrophe.

  He walked to the bed and sat, unable to think beyond his own failure.

  The door into Lamont’s trophy room was open, and light spilled out onto his bed. I stood in the middle of our room, trying to decide what I should do. Call out? Go in?

  Something wasn’t right. I knew that. Danny had violated a sacred place, and I was afraid for him.

  But Lamont’s dead, Renee. Why are you so afraid?

  I stepped forward, quiet as a mouse, and edged my head around the door that opened into Lamont’s inner sanctum.

  The heads were there, staring at me. The ropes still hung on the wall. A black bag sat on the desk, half open. Danny was here.

  I looked around the room again. Nothing had changed. Everything was the way I remembered it. But then I saw that the door at the back of the trophy room was also open, and the light inside was on.

  I had forgotten about that room. I don’t know how I could have, because upon seeing the dim light I thought, Oh no, he’s gone into the inner sanctum to pay for his sins!

  Such a terrible fear welled up from somewhere deep inside that I started to shake. I wanted to rush in and save Danny. I wanted to turn and run away. I wanted to scream. I wanted to race upstairs and get my gun.

  Instead I just stood there, unable to move, not daring to make the slightest sound.

  Maybe Danny had already gone and I was left alone in this forbidden place—that thought was even more frightening than the thought of Danny paying for his sins.

  I hurried forward, dreading each step. I placed one hand on the edge of the inner door frame to keep from falling. Then I stepped forward, peered into that secret room, and saw him.

  Danny was sitting on my pink bed, facing the back wall. Unmoving. Like a man who’d been turned to stone.

  It came to me then, like a whisper out of hell, that this room was a very, very bad place.

  I don’t know if it was the sight of Danny or the vague memory of my own torment in this room that bothered me more. The fear that had followed me into the room rose up like a monster and became a sorrow that swallowed me whole.

  The angels were weeping. Danny could hear them floating around in the darkness of his mind, crying. For his mother. For his sisters. For Renee. But mostly for him.

  They were crying for Renee’s pain, but even more for his failure to save her. He’d failed as a boy. He’d failed as man. He’d failed as a priest.

  And now that weeping was as unnerving to him as a scream, mocking him because he was indeed nothing but a priest with a graveyard to show for all of his pathetic attempts to fix this world.

  If what he suspected about his last attempt to fix the world was in fact true, then he would rather be dead.

  The weeping became a wail. A scream. Only then did the idea enter his clouded mind that it was a real sound, a high-pitched scream that had broken out of hell and come to mock him. Demons had been sent…

  Danny abruptly turned. Stared at what he first thought was one of the screaming angels then immediately realized was not.

  Renee stood in the doorway of the checkered room. Her frail body was trembling all over; her eyes were clenched; her mouth was parted in a scream. And on that scream rode the pain of a thousand demons, clawing at the jaws of hell in their desperate attempt to get out.

  “Renee…” His voice was raspy, powerless.

  Danny stumbled from the bed, rushed to her in three long steps, and reached to embrace her, desperate to bring comfort, forgiveness, love, grace—anything to stop her unbearable pain.

  “Renee…”

  She smashed his hand away.

  “Renee?” She saw him as her tormentor? As Lamont?

  Her hands formed fists that began to beat at him.

  “Please, Renee.”

  Danny backed away but she followed him, flailing in weak objection. He grasped her wrists and tried to hush her. “It’s okay, it’s okay—”

  “No, you can’t…” Her face twisted with desperate anguish. “You can’t see this!”

  “But it’s over! Whatever he did to you here is done. I’ll protect you, Renee. Please.”

  He tried to hold her, but she pulled herself free and covered her face with both hands. She sank to her knees, lowered her face onto the pink comforter, and wept.

  It’s your fault, Danny. All of this is your fault. You are powerless. All he knew to do was kneel beside her, put one arm over her shoulders, and let her cry.

  But there was even more here, wasn’t there? Something even more horrifying than what he had learned in these past few minutes.

  He couldn’t be certain, but if what he suspected turned out to be the truth…

>   The pain Renee felt now might seem like a child’s mere howling over a stubbed toe.

  But only if.

  He would know soon. Far too soon.

  31

  I WAS SO upset.

  I realize that seems like an understatement, but sometimes the simplest explanations are the best. And at the time, my understanding of the situation was really very simple.

  Danny was in trouble.

  The law has a hard edge that can be respected only if it’s strictly enforced, Lamont used to say. Even a dog with an electric collar needs to be shocked now and then to learn that there’s a boundary.

  I was thinking that Danny had crossed one of Lamont’s very sacred boundaries, and now he would have to pay for it. There were never exceptions. I knew that because I’d crossed those boundaries, too, although I couldn’t recall the specifics.

  My own suffering in that room didn’t really register. Or maybe it did and I mistook it for a fear of what might happen to Danny. After all, how would I know about the cost of crossing the law unless I’d paid the price? And why would I come so unglued, unless that suffering had been really terrible?

  But I still had all that blocked out, and I thought I was weeping for Danny. He was mistaken about Lamont being the one who’d hurt me, but that was okay, he just didn’t know.

  Oh, I don’t know, I was all mixed up, wasn’t I? My mind was swimming with pain and sorrow and I wasn’t clear about why except that I felt so sorry for Danny because he’d broken the rules and would be punished.

  He knelt beside me for a long time and my crying began to ease. It occurred to me that we were still in the room. What if Lamont came home and found us here? Together!

  We had to get out!

  “We have to get out.” I pushed myself to my feet, steadied myself to clear a spell of dizziness, then hurried for the door. “Hurry!”

  The second I cleared the closet door I spun back and waved Danny through. “Hurry. Hurry!”

  He ducked past me and I hit the switch. The wall rumbled. But the light inside was still on.

  “He’ll see the light!”

  Daring to get my arm caught as the opening closed, I reached in around the corner, flipped the light switch down, and jerked my hand out. The wall closed with a soft thump.

  I stepped back, shut the closet door, and stood still, thinking it had been a close call.

  When I turned to face Danny he was watching me carefully. “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t want to break down again, so I turned away.

  “Renee—”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “He’s gone, Renee,” Danny said. “Lamont is dead.”

  I blinked. That was right. “Of course he is,” I said. But I was still shaking. “I don’t know what got into me. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Renee. Please…”

  His words washed over me like soothing oil, and my gratitude for him drew new tears from my eyes. I turned to him. Sank into his arms.

  “Thank you, Danny. Thank you. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  Danny ran his hand over my hair. “It’s okay. I’m so sorry, Renee.”

  “You’re right, he’s dead. He won’t hurt you. He’s dead.”

  “He can’t hurt either of us,” Danny said.

  For a moment my sorrow was so intense, I couldn’t get enough air to complete a breath. I used it all to whisper what was in my heart without thinking what it meant.

  “I miss him so much, Danny,” I said.

  His hand stopped stroking my hair. His body stiffened.

  “He was a monster, Renee.”

  Who was a monster? I still had not connected Lamont to any of the pain I felt. In my mind Bourque was a monster, and I’d just—

  I jerked my head off Danny’s shoulder and stepped back. “I shot him!”

  “You shot Lamont?”

  “What? No, I shot Bourque. I think he’s dead. I shouldn’t have gone, I know, but I couldn’t help it, Danny.”

  My confession stunned him into silence.

  “I had to do it! He was saying things about Lamont. Someone had to deal with him.” I felt foolish trying to justify myself. “Please, Danny, don’t be upset with me. Like you said, Bourque’s a monster.”

  He blinked at me. “I wasn’t talking about Jonathan Bourque.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was talking about Lamont,” he said. “I was talking about the man who locked you up in that room to punish you for not following his rules. I was talking about the monster who abused you here in this house for a full year.”

  I stared at him, still not sure what he was saying. “You can’t really believe that.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Renee. I found out—”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I spoke to Jonathan Bourque today. He—”

  “No! He’s lying. That’s why I shot him! He’s lying!”

  “No, he’s not lying. And it gets worse.”

  “What are you talking about?” I was horrified. It felt like a betrayal to me.

  “I don’t think Bourque killed Lamont.”

  Why was Danny taking sides with him? Unless…

  A streak of hope lit my horizon. “You’re saying Lamont’s not dead?”

  Danny’s eyes were misted with tears, and for several long seconds he just stared at me. Then he walked over to the desk, opened his bag, pulled out a manila file, and turned to face me.

  “The last man I killed was named Cain Kellerman. He lived in San Pedro, and the list of his crimes against humanity would make any sane person sick.”

  He opened the folder, looked at its contents, then lifted his eyes to meet mine. “Do you recognize him?” He flipped the file around.

  A large photograph of a man with dark hair and black-rimmed glasses, eyes as blue as the ocean, was taped to the inside cover. I didn’t recognize him.

  “No,” I said.

  “Are you sure? Look closer,” Danny said.

  “I’ve never…” But then the man’s mouth and nose triggered recognition. He was there, under that hair, behind those glasses.

  I was looking at Lamont. Younger maybe, or older. His brother?

  “Who is this?”

  “You tell me.”

  I stared and now all I could see was Lamont, right there staring back at me. “That’s…But Lamont had brown eyes. And blond hair.”

  “But it’s him. It’s Lamont, isn’t it?”

  It was, I could see that now. “Yes.” My voice was a mere whisper.

  Danny slowly closed the folder, his eyes on me.

  “He had more than one name,” he said. “To most he was known as Cain Kellerman.”

  “Cain? But you said he was Lamont.”

  “He was both. When he dyed his hair and wore the colored contacts, he went by the name Cain Kellerman.”

  “Cain Kellerman? The man you…” It was only then, staring into Danny’s eyes, that I connected the dots. “You…you’re saying that you killed Lamont?”

  “He led two lives, Renee. One as an attorney named Cain Kellerman, the man I killed. The other as Bourque’s man Lamont Myers, known only to a few.”

  My mind was exploding. Then it went black at the edges. I couldn’t feel my fingers. I couldn’t find my voice.

  “I think Jonathan Bourque was planning to kill him, but I got to him first. Either way, the man who held you captive in his glass home is dead. He’ll never hurt you again.”

  He said it as if he were holding up a trophy. One more head for the wall here in Lamont’s room. Lamont’s head.

  “He…he saved me,” I stammered.

  “He was trolling that night, looking for a victim. He found you.”

  It was a lie. All lies!

  My mouth was open, but I clamped it shut, I remember that. And it was almost as if the clamping of my jaw threw a switch somewhere in my head. A circuit had shorted in my drug-​altered psyche.

  I snapped.

&nb
sp; My name is Renee, which means “reborn” in French, and I was reborn yet again in that moment. I went from being Renee the lover, who was falling for the priest named Danny, to Renee the killer, who despised Danny for killing Lamont, whose death I’d vowed to avenge.

  I knew even then, in that first moment, that I would kill Danny.

  However infatuated I might be with this hero who’d walked into my life, I couldn’t accept that everything I’d lived for was just a big lie. Normal people just don’t throw everything out like that. Staunch Republicans don’t roll over and wake up Democrats. Buddhists don’t snap their fingers and become Muslims. Muslims don’t read an article and become Hindus.

  I was reborn into Lamont’s glass house. I owed everything to him. When he died, a large part of me had died with him, and what was left lived to kill the person who’d killed us.

  My understanding was that simple, and the conviction ran as deep as any fundamental religious conviction.

  “Renee, you’ve got to understand,” he said.

  I heard: You’re such a gullible little fool.

  His face sagged. “I want to help you,” he said.

  I heard: I slit Lamont’s throat so I could have you.

  He took a step toward me. “I know this is hard. You must hate me. I can see it in your eyes. I…”

  I didn’t hear the rest. The sound of my pumping blood had filled my ears. I turned on my heels and walked toward the door with only one thought on my mind.

  My gun was in my kit. I had to get my gun.

  I couldn’t go for the gun in Danny’s kit, because I could see the light in his eyes: He already knew my mind. He was a master and would stop me before I could take two steps toward his kit. But he didn’t know that I had my kit upstairs.

  So, I would get my gun and I would turn around and then I would shoot Danny Hansen in the head where he stood.

  And then, after I had cried, I would leave the house and never return. Because then it would finally be over.

  I had no other choice, see? All of this time I’d seen Danny as my new savior, but he’d been tricking me the whole time. He wasn’t my savior, he was the man who’d killed my savior. That truth filled me with a kind of rage I’d never felt before.