The Priest's Graveyard Read online

But the angel’s voice kept washing over me, smothering me with such kindness that I thought maybe I had died and they really had managed to wash away my stains and make me beautiful.

  I woke up once and saw that I was in a bedroom filled with soft light. A few images worked their way into my consciousness: a sheet pulled up under my chin; my bandaged arm resting on top of it. A moose was staring at me.

  I wasn’t in heaven. I was in a hospital. No. No, I was in someone’s room. In a house.

  Then I slipped into a coma.

  4

  THE RAIN HAD stopped, leaving the warehouse in an eerie calm disturbed only by the sound of water dripping down gutters.

  “So this is your game?” the congressman asked. “To take people you think are guilty of hypocrisy and torture them? Who isn’t guilty? You?”

  “We are all guilty. I’m interested primarily in the Pharisees, though. The ones who are filthy inside and pretend they are not.”

  “And abusing my rights doesn’t place you in that category?”

  “I’m not abusing your rights. You gave those up willingly the moment you first raped your maid.”

  The congressman stared at him, then swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “So maybe you have a point. I may have my shortcomings, but I honestly do serve the country. That’s my greater good.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’ve watched you and I would say you serve only lust, power, and money.”

  The congressman leaned back in his chair, eyes fixed on Danny.

  The horrors of Bosnia crept into his mind. When his mother and sisters had been raped and killed by the enemy, he’d fled the house. God, when will the pain end? The fact that it had all happened in the name of religion only made the memory more bitter.

  Not that Danny abhorred religion. Indeed, his life was in service to true religion, which was about love, for the greatest commandment was simply to love God and neighbor.

  So here he was, administering his own kind of love based loosely on the practices of a perfect teacher. If he ever did learn that his actions were in any way immoral, he might rid the world of a monster by killing himself. He would certainly change everything and seek reconciliation with both society and God.

  Paul Birch’s face was beginning to twist up with some anguish. Perhaps he was understanding that his own heart was inconsistent with all he professed, that he did not know how to love.

  “Paul,” Danny said softly, folding his hands. “I’m sorry, but we are running out of time. I need to know if you’re going to resign your seat and never take up politics again.”

  The man’s face was red. He looked far too large for the chair to which his hands were tied, more so when he was so puffed up with rage.

  “Pretend that I’m God for a moment,” Danny said.

  “You’re not God!” the man shouted. His lips were wet and fat and spewed spittle. “You have no right!”

  “I said pretend, Paul. I’m only a messenger, the lowest, surely. But I can’t bow out of my responsibility because you’re upset about the consequences of your actions.”

  “You’re no better than me.”

  “Perhaps. But I’ve changed my ways. Will you change yours? Will you step down?”

  The man bit off his reply in a low, bitter voice. “Don’t be a fool.”

  That’s what I thought.

  Danny walked over to a black briefcase that sat on a large folding table, the only other piece of furniture in the abandoned warehouse. He unclasped the latches and lifted the top of the case. Inside lay his instruments of choice: the necessary narcotics, a pair of garden shears, two silver scalpels, a pair of Vise-Grips, one twelve-inch butcher’s knife, and a selection of tapes, bandages, and assorted items just in case, including a yellow spring-loaded clamp used to seal potato-chip bags so as to keep the contents fresh and crunchy.

  His silenced nine-millimeter pistol was tucked away in a holster under his right arm.

  He withdrew a syringe that he’d prepared earlier, removed the sleeve, and checked to make sure no air was trapped in the needle. Satisfied, he turned around and approached Paul Birch.

  The man’s eyes were round. “What’s that? What are you going to do?”

  Without responding, Danny injected the man in the shoulder and pushed the plunger home.

  The congressman roared and jerked, then cut loose with a string of curses that made clear his fear of what might come next.

  Danny returned to his briefcase and put the syringe away.

  “Are you still with me, Congressman?”

  The man gave him a groan.

  “If you find a way to continue being unloving, I will come to you and I will make things much worse for you. The same if you talk.”

  He faced the man, who was sinking fast. “Did you hear me?”

  The man’s lips sagged as the drug relaxed his muscles. He nodded. And then his eyes slowly closed.

  There, in a manner of speaking, sat the man who’d killed his sisters. The powerful sedative now flowing through his veins rendered him unconscious.

  There slouched an esteemed congressman from California, fattened on the many lies fed to him by a corrupt system that had long ago embraced the law instead of love.

  There slept a demon who would wake up forever altered by his encounter with a sword-wielding angel, who would be Danny.

  Perhaps he should just kill the man, Danny thought. The politician would not change, surely.

  Confident that Paul Birch was now under, Danny worked quickly to free the tape that strapped his wrists and ankles to the chair. The man was breathing heavily, dead to this world.

  It took Danny a few minutes and considerable struggle to drag the limp body and hoist it onto the table.

  There, he surmised, lay his eighth pupil, three of whom had not lived to tell of their lesson. If the truth was allowed in hell, they would be there now, spreading the gospel according to Danny and bemoaning their own very bad behavior.

  He’d never administered his justice in a cruel way, because the point wasn’t to torture the poor saps. The point was to change their behaviors by altering their life situations—or removing them from life altogether.

  Also, he wasn’t a man who relished a physical struggle.

  After the ordeal involving his mother and sisters in Bosnia, Danny had shadowed a doctor who patched up the wounded, mostly civilians. When he came to the United States to pursue higher education in his late teens, he maintained his interest in healing, and when he decided to take on the vipers, he engrossed himself in surgical techniques. It was amazing what one could learn on the Internet.

  To call what he did surgery, however, would be unfair to the many physicians who’d devoted their lives to that fine craft. He preferred the term procedure.

  Danny removed his leather gloves and pulled on thinner surgical gloves. He pried Paul Birch’s jaw open with a dental wedge, which he placed between the rear right molars.

  He pulled the man’s tongue out using the Vise-Grips and cut off two-thirds of it with his garden shears. Blood flowed from the severed stump, and Danny worked quickly to apply the yellow chip-bag clamp.

  It took him two tries, but in short order the man’s severed stump was compressed and the bleeding nearly stopped. Drowning on the blood that had already exited the wound was still a concern.

  Danny pulled Paul Birch’s head to the table’s edge and twisted down. Blood ran from his mouth and formed a small pool on the floor. Danny positioned the man on his side so blood would run out of his mouth rather than back into his throat, where it could cut off his breathing.

  He hated the mess of it all, but doing the right thing was never a matter of having to love it. He replaced his tools in his briefcase and cleaned up.

  The congressman would be without a tongue when he woke, but otherwise in the same physical condition in which he’d begun his narcotic-induced nap.

  The same would not be true, Danny hoped, of Birch’s mental condition. He would certainly be screaming bloo
dy murder. He might not be able to form words from a podium any longer, but one did not need a tongue to scream. Or to write. At the least, Paul Birch would hurry to the FBI and write down his full account, landing them even more evidence on the vigilante who was out there making their job easier by ridding the world of scum.

  At the worst, Paul would continue his nasty politicking using his keyboard alone. If so, not for long.

  The thought gave Danny considerable pause. He really should just let the man die in peace now and rid the world of a terrible thing.

  He examined the warehouse space one last time to be sure he’d left no evidence beyond his shoe prints, the chair, the table, and Paul Birch himself. They might find the odd fiber from his clothing, but it would lead them only to a big-box store that had sold a hundred thousand shirts, slacks, and shoes of his kind.

  The mask, the gloves, a long-sleeved undershirt, and long underwear would have kept any of his hair from falling to the ground. Even so, he could not linger. He had to get into a cold shower to wash away the sweat and general displeasure of his completed task.

  But that was just it, wasn’t it? His task didn’t feel completed. The fact was, Paul Birch deserved to die. He would not see the light. Danny would only have to return to his home one day and end his life as promised.

  Why not just finish the job now? Truly, not finishing the job might be immoral.

  After a full risky minute of consideration, Danny did what he finally concluded was moral, all things considered. He pulled out his silenced nine-millimeter pistol and shot the congressman through the head.

  Then he retrieved both bullet and shell, picked up his briefcase, and left the warehouse, confident that he’d done everything right.

  Surely Bobby Lopez was seated in heaven with Danny’s mother this very moment, smiling down on him.

  5

  LIGHT FILTERED THROUGH my eyelashes. My mind was blank, like a whiteboard. No dreams to remember, no sense of myself other than the fact that I was alive.

  It took me a few moments to remember what the thing turning lazily through the air above me was called. A ceiling fan. One with white blades pushing the air, although I couldn’t feel it stir.

  The thing of it was, I couldn’t really place where I was, or why I was there. I wasn’t even certain who I was.

  An ache throbbed down my right side as my heart pushed blood through my body. I could hear the sound of the pulse in my right ear. When I pried my eyes down to see what was causing the soreness, my eye sockets burned.

  My arm was in a white cast. I remembered then that I had been on the brink of death and was somehow saved.

  The room I was in was painted off-white, but the bottom third of the walls looked like they were covered in pink leather. A large moose head was mounted on the wall opposite me, glaring at me with glassy eyes. Two stuffed foxes watched me from either side. I didn’t feel like I had the strength to turn my head, but with a painful swivel of my eyes I could see that similar heads were mounted on the other walls.

  I was being watched by all these dead animals, as if I were the one in the zoo and they’d each paid for entrance to see the human on the bed.

  There were no windows that I could see. A dresser with a large mirror over it was painted with pink roses. So was a large armoire in the corner. The door leading out of the room was closed. It was painted white, too. However unique, the room’s pink-and-white decor looked strangely beautiful to me.

  Something clicked on my left and I listened. I thought I heard someone breathing. After a long pause, a door closed.

  “You’re awake?” His soft voice reached into me like a powerful narcotic, flooding me with relief. It was him. Although I couldn’t remember the details, I knew immediately that I was alive because of the man behind this warm voice.

  Then he walked into my field of vision and looked down at me wearing a gentle smile. His face came back to me—that carefully groomed face, that blond hair slicked back, that strong jawline, those soft brown eyes.

  He’d been dressed in a black suit when he’d first come to save me. Today he wore a pressed dress shirt open at the collar, and I could see a silver chain like a cord around his neck. His sleeves were folded back. A silver Rolex hugged a strong wrist.

  He was tan. He was beautiful. It was as if God himself had stepped into my room.

  “My name is Lamont,” he said.

  The name was familiar, like the scent of my mother’s perfume.

  “I’ve been telling you that for two weeks. Lamont Myers. Do you remember?”

  I opened my mouth to say I thought so, but nothing came out.

  He sat down on the side of the bed and brushed my cheek with his forefinger. “It’s okay, save your energy.” His eyes sparkled. “You’re back with us, that’s the important thing.”

  Had he said two weeks?

  Without thinking, I lifted a shaking hand and brought it to his hand on my cheek. He took my fingers into his warm palm and squeezed them.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  I cleared my throat, determined to speak. “Fine,” I croaked.

  His eyes darted to a bottle of water on the nightstand. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. You must be dying of thirst!” He spun the lid off, inserted a straw in the neck, and pressed the tube against my lips.

  I took a long sip, keeping my eyes on his the whole time. Maybe I was afraid he would vanish again. The cool water felt good in my throat.

  “Better?”

  “Yes,” I rasped, and I was. “Two weeks?”

  He set the bottle back on the nightstand. “You’ve been in a coma for two weeks, Renee. The doctors didn’t think you’d make it. I insisted that you stay here, where I could keep an eye on you after the surgery on your arm. They put up a fuss as you can imagine, but I had a private physician sign a release. You weren’t carrying any ID.”

  “You know my name?”

  “I do now. I hope you don’t mind. Mr. Kauffman was kind enough to fill me in on a few details.”

  The name gouged into my memory like a pitchfork. Cyrus. My eyes must have shown my shock.

  “Don’t worry, he won’t be bothering you any longer.”

  “He’s going to come after me.”

  “No. I can assure you that Cyrus Kauffman will never be coming after you.”

  “How do you know?”

  He frowned but his eyes twinkled. “I have my means. There isn’t much money can’t buy. But enough about me. You should rest, and if you’re feeling up to it, you might try some soup. I had the doctor remove a temporary feeding tube this morning after he expressed concerns about infection. He’ll be back later.”

  “What happened?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I was…” The whole ordeal was still foggy. Emotion choked me.

  “It’s okay, honey.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “You’re going to be okay now. I promise.”

  I nodded and held on to his fingers. “Don’t leave me,” I whispered.

  “I won’t.” He paused, then spoke my name as if tasting it for the first time. “Renee Gilmore.” His eyes searched mine. “You have no living relative that I could find.”

  “No?”

  “No, dear. Your mother passed away in a car accident three years ago.”

  Yes, I remembered that now.

  “Your father is presumed dead.”

  “Dead?” Was that a shock? I forgot whether he was alive.

  “Unfortunately, yes. No aunts or uncles who know you. No living relative who has any connection to you legally. I’m so sorry.”

  He said it as if my solitude in this life were a death sentence. All I’d had was Cyrus, and in that moment I wanted to go back to Cyrus. He wasn’t so bad, right? I’d managed with him.

  But the moment I thought it, I felt my bones begin to tremble. It was as if my body knew more than my mind and was rebelling at the idea of rushing back to the man who would as soon break all my bones as give me a fix
.

  Lamont put his hand on my shaking body. “Your body’s craving heroin. But I don’t think it’s a good idea. Do you?”

  At the mention of the drug, I wanted it. My need was so powerful that tears came to my eyes.

  “No,” I said.

  “Good.”

  I was suddenly very tired, and I couldn’t get my body to stop shaking. He got a wool blanket from the armoire and put it over me. Then, although I didn’t want to, I fell asleep.

  I must have slept a long time. When I woke, a man in a white pin-striped shirt was leaning over me, peeling my eyelids open. I blinked, and he lifted his hand.

  “There we go. She’s awake.”

  The man who’d saved me…Lamont. Lamont Myers. Lamont hurried to the bedside. My pulse quickened when our eyes met.

  He took my hand. “You’re awake! Thank God. How are you feeling?”

  How long had I been sleeping?

  “Sorry, this is Dr. Barry Horst, the physician I mentioned.”

  The doctor smiled. “You’re a lucky one.” He was taking my pulse. “I’m not sure you were comatose after all. Your vitals are still strong as a horse. How’s your throat?”

  I cleared it. “Hurts.”

  “It’ll be sore for a couple days, normal. Let’s take a look, shall we?”

  He stood, peeled down my sheet, and I saw then for the first time that I was naked.

  Lamont turned away and walked toward the door. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

  The doctor asked me a dozen questions about how I felt, everything from my arm, which ached, to my bladder, which felt fine. It wasn’t until he carefully helped me into a sitting position that I became aware of the catheter.

  “Oh, yes, I’ll remove that if you think you can urinate. Do you want to try?”

  “Yes.”

  It took us a few minutes, but I finally found my legs. He helped me to the bathroom, then back to the bed, by which time I was exhausted but robed and feeling a little less helpless.

  “I’ve given Mr. Myers my recommended diet. Liquids only for a day, I’m afraid. If you keep it all down, we’ll get some solids in you. Fair enough?”