The Dying Hour (13 page)

A
t the instant of his birth, his teenaged, drug-addicted mother tried to flush his tiny body down the toilet of an Amtrak terminal between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Alarmed by the screams, a young Jesuit priest rushed into the washroom, to the blood-drenched stall, and saved his life.

His mother was taken to a psychiatric hospital where she later died.

An orphaned bastard, he was placed with social services.

Throughout his infancy and early years he rarely cried or spoke. Concerned by his silence, foster parents regarded him as “the eerie one.” He was passed through a succession of families whose capacity for love diminished with each new address.

When he turned nine, two older foster sisters used the promise of seeing a bird’s nest to lure him to the roof of their building. He searched amid the vents and fans in vain while they smoked and drank from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag.

Look at the idiot.

“You hardly ever make a sound, do you?” They stood over him, grinning before flicking their butts at him. “We know a way to make you scream.”

They pushed him down, each girl grasped one of his small ankles, then they held him upside down over the roof’s edge some thirty floors up.

“Scream, you little bastard!”

He remained silent.

He’d shut down, extended his arms outward and arched his head to the world below. At that moment, suspended between life and death, his fate had been revealed. It began to crystallize what his bright, young mind had long believed. That part of him had died at birth; and part of him had evolved into something greater than what he was.

He was fearless.

God was with him.

God had selected him to battle evil.

In all of its forms.

Like the two witches above doing all they could to make him cry out for mercy. They let his hand-medown shoes come off, then his socks, as inch by inch he slipped from their grip.

“Scream!”

Silence was his response.

“Scream!”

Grunting in frustration, they jerked his body but he never made a sound. Instead, he raised his head, looking up at them, his rage seething beyond measure.

Defeated, they dropped him on the rooftop.

“If you tell, we’ll kill you.”

He never told.

Not after the abuse at the hands of his female foster family members continued. Not after their beatings, not after their sexual assaults, or dunkings in the bathtub and their favorite, special brandings with the curling iron and the terrible places they would insert it.

With each new torture they inflicted, he drew strength, the way an archer draws his bow, slowly building power, calculating the perfect moment to release it.

Once, they told him the tuna in his sandwich was actually brain matter from a cat they’d killed to cast a spell that would turn him into a toad if he told anyone about the things they’d done to him.

He never told.

Judgment Day for the witches would come.

Vengeance would come.

As a young man, his rage lay dormant as he roamed the country, first working hard to live a normal, exemplary life, one that would hold immediate meaning. But along the way, he stumbled.

Because of a woman.

He refused to dwell on the circumstances. It made him angry. One fact was undeniable. A woman was the wellhead of every episode of suffering in his life.

It was what led him to prison.

It was what led to his enlightenment and the further revelation of his destiny; that he and another he’d encountered in prison, a man whose life had followed a similar course of events, had both been dispatched by heaven.

To unite in battle.

Together they would eradicate the world of malevolent forces.

And it was at this stage of his life, as he looked back upon all he’d endured, all he’d overcome, that he embraced the righteousness of the part he would play in history. God had rescued him from death in a rail terminal toilet and had sanctioned him to exact full retribution against His enemies, the heretics, sorcerers, blasphemers, proud demons, liars, whores, and witches who committed sacrilege.

It was predicted. It was predetermined.

All encoded in the ancient text he and his friend had discovered.

Reflections on the Ritual.

An ancient text derived from letters, trial transcripts, and the diaries of a sixteenth-century executioner.

The executioner’s soul, as old as time, had been reborn in his body, so that his work could continue, so that the world would know God’s Wrath.

S
eattle Police headquarters sits downtown at Fifth and Cherry, the stone portion of a half-block, twelvestory complex it shares with the city’s municipal courts building with its monolithic glass facade.

Inside at his desk, Seattle Narcotics Detective Willie Heintz stroked his Vandyke beard, concentrating as he continued clicking through file after file on his computer monitor for Sawridge County Detective Hank Stralla.

Stralla was on the other end of the line in Bellingham, frustrated by cross-jurisdictional hurdles he had to jump. Heintz stuck out his bottom lip and shook his head.

“Nothing in our records for Karen Katherine Harding.”

After the lab had alerted Stralla to finding cocaine in Karen Harding’s umbrella, he called Heintz for a favor.

“Nope. Nothing for us, Hank. Her name doesn’t come up. No traffic, no parking tickets. No hits. A good girl. You thinking, maybe too good?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me try something with her address. That’s in the East Precinct.”

Heintz’s keyboard clicked as he entered Karen’s address into a number of department data banks. The screen scrolled with results of his query on complaint, call, and offender history for Karen’s apartment, her building, and the surrounding addresses.

“Nothing at all for her. It’s all been checked, even her neighbors have been canvassed and run through.”

“Willie, would you run her boyfriend, Luke Terrell?”

“Sure, but I’ve got you down for a big ass favor.”

Heintz’s computer beeped with his query.

“Nothing on the name. He’s clean with us. But his address could hit the cherries for you. Could fit with the coke in the umbrella.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hold on.” Heintz typed. “That’s Loader Village. Active. Mostly kids who buy and some small-fry dealers.” Heintz clicked into several other data banks, went quiet, then grunted. “Hold on, Hank.”

Stralla heard Heintz call out to another detective, asking about the status of something at Loader Village. He couldn’t hear the response.

“Keep this under your hat, but a DEA task force is working with us, King County, and East Precinct people. Loader Village comes into play. Seems some serious threats have been made about outstanding drug debts.”

“Does Luke Terrell come up in any of this?”

“Not from what I can see. But he lives in Block D, and Block D’s mentioned from time to time in one of the files.”

“Really?”

“There are sixty units in Block D. Your coke could be related to him or any one of them. I’m just giving you the atmosphere.”

Stralla thought for a moment.

“Listen,” Heintz said. “I have to go. I’ve got some pals on the task force. Give me some time, I’ll make some discreet checks for you. Maybe talk to some of our CIs.”

“Thanks, Willie.”

Stralla hung up, tossed his pen on his desk, and sighed. It was clear, long before Bill and Marlene’s cell phone call this morning, that Terrell was lying. Trouble was, none of the detectives had anything strong they could use to challenge him with.

It might be time to go at him with what they had.

Stralla swiveled his chair and caught a glimpse of one of the big double-decker ferries departing the Bellingham terminal. Soon it would be threading its way through Rosario Strait to Friday Harbor or Victoria.

He went back to Luke Terrell’s statement and his notes. There was something in here. Stralla was pissed off by the delay, but Karen’s phone records had finally arrived.

Before Karen left, she was on the phone with Terrell, who said they talked and everything was fine. Yet Karen took off. The next morning, Luke used his key to enter Karen’s apartment. Right. Why was he looking for her?

Karen’s phone records showed that the first call from Luke Terrell came early in the evening of the night she left. But, and here was the kicker, it was followed by, Stralla counted, nine calls, then another six in the morning. Fifteen after the first call.

All from Luke.

Fifteen damn calls.

Then he showed up in her empty apartment the next morning. Why? The neighbor below heard a lot of noise. What was Luke really doing in her apartment? If everything was fine, why was he so aggressive in trying to reach her? That reporter from the
Mirror,
Jason Wade, had it right. Was Terrell searching for Karen?

Or something else?

Stralla turned to the far wall and the large white marker board. It was busy with Karen’s picture, a running time line punctuated with notes, maps, and highlights of key events, like her stop at Big Timber. It was neat, orderly, the foundation for building a court case.

Stralla got up, uncapped a green marker, and drew a thread through the entire case to represent the latest development.

Drugs.

Say they had a blowout that night—maybe something to do with drugs. Karen’s upset. They argue. She flees. Maybe, on an earlier occasion, he’s hid some of his coke in her umbrella and now he rushes to her apartment to find it. But the umbrella’s gone. Maybe Luke was holding it for somebody? Or, owed a heavy hitter? Maybe he’d been threatened? Maybe Karen got caught up in it, or was taken because of a debt? Maybe she was being held? There was no ransom call. None that he knew of. What if she was a mule or dealer? She’d have cash. Maybe a lot of cash. It would explain how she could vanish and survive.

Stralla’s jaw tightened. He wanted to talk to Luke Terrell again.

He stood up, studied the board, then looked out to the bay.

The ferry had shrunk in the distance, like Stralla’s logic. He was so stymied by this case. Nothing made sense. He glanced at Raife Ansboro’s empty desk. He was pounding the street questioning registered sex offenders on their whereabouts after one of the Big Timber waitresses looked at a photomontage and said one of them resembled a man who’d been in the restaurant the same night Karen was there.

There was still a strong chance Karen was stalked, abducted, or taken in a crime of opportunity. It could be linked to Roxanne Palmer, the drug-addicted hooker from Spokane, chopped up and displayed in the Rattlesnake Hills.

Damn it.

This thing refused to crack.

Stralla snatched his jacket and trod off to catch up with Ansboro.

A
million worries gnawed at Jason while he showered.

Fragments of Karen Harding’s and Roxanne Palmer’s cases that didn’t fit. Gideon Cull. Luke Terrell. And pieces of his life that were coming apart.

Little made sense to him.

After cold cereal for breakfast, he sorted through the documents Nancy Poden, the news librarian, had pulled for him on Cull.

Very obscure.

A news brief out of Spokane reported that Gideon Cull, a local chaplain and lecturer at Tumbler River College, was under investigation arising from allegations that he had sexually harassed a female student in Spokane.

It was undated but had to be around ten years old.

Jason read it again. It was serious stuff, and this piece fit so well it was scary. It could be the reason why Cull was edgy, then had complained about the interview. He had an old sex complaint against him from a female college student in Spokane, and now one of his students was missing.

And Roxanne Palmer was a street hooker from Spokane.

But why hadn’t anyone picked up on any of this? Shouldn’t he call Nestor? Right, so he could pass it to Astrid Grant or Ben Randolph? No, he’d follow it up himself.

Jason read it again. There it was, plain and simple. All those years ago, a female college student had said Gideon Cull,
known as Professor Touchy, or Creepy Cull to his Seattle college students,
Jason added, had harassed her. And now, one of his Seattle students was missing.

Jason searched through his notebook with Cull’s interview.

“No doubt you’ve discovered that I’m far from perfect, that I’ve learned from the mistakes of my past. I do my best to help people benefit from my errors, to see that things are not always as bad as they seem, that there’s something perfect waiting for you. In the next life.”

This was a hell of a thing.

And what about Karen’s boyfriend, Luke Terrell? What was he hiding?

Jason downed his coffee, picked up his phone, and called Nancy Poden at the newspaper. While it rang, he took stock of his situation. Nestor had warned him that he was suspended indefinitely, not terminated. That he could not represent himself as a
Mirror
reporter to the public without the
Mirror
’s permission. Well, nothing prevented him from doing research, or working for himself as a freelancer.

“Library, Nancy Poden.”

“Hi, it’s Jason Wade. Thanks for the research material on that little secret file.”

“No problem. Did it help?”

“Very much. I was wondering if you could follow up on one for me.”

“Shoot.”

“Can you search everything in Spokane related to the one on the harassment complaint, document thirty-eight?”

“Hold on, let me call it up.” Poden was fast. “Oh yes, that one. I’ll do what I can, I’ll search the
Spokesman-Review,
the local community papers, some of the law data banks, alumni, stuff like that. Where can I reach you?”

“Here’s my number and here’s an e-mail address where you can send me anything you find.”

Jason covered his face with his hands to think. Surely something would come up in the archives on this. A chaplain who also lectured at a local college was alleged to have harassed a student. That should’ve been covered. Surely, police would’ve been involved. Jason switched on his laptop and searched the site for the Spokane Police Department. Even if the case was a decade old, the collective memory of the detectives would have to recall it.

Jason found the site, then reached for his phone.

Before he punched the number he hesitated. Was he willing to risk everything by secretly pursuing the disappearance of Karen Harding while suspended? Somebody had to chase this thing. Had to try to connect the dots. Maybe there was a reason that he was the one who broke her story. He certainly had nothing more to lose.

Jason met Karen Harding’s eyes pleading to him from a news clipping.

He pressed the numbers.