Werewolf Cop (36 page)

“I didn't tell them she came to the church either,” she said.

He pulled his hand from her. “You didn't have to . . .” he started to say. But he covered his eyes with his hand and said, instead, “Oh, Grace, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.”

Outside, the rain was still falling—falling hard. It set up a steady hiss and patter on the roof.

“Zach—baby—” Grace said, looking up at him through her tears. “You listen to me now, okay? No matter what—no matter what—you're the husband of my life. You understand? You know for a fact I've never been with anyone else. We are one flesh, one flesh and blood to me, no matter what. And I know I don't see the things y'all see . . . all the horror and reality. But I'm not stupid. I know what people are and what they do. And I know these things are different for men than for women sometimes. And if maybe this woman . . . came on to you or . . . drew you in somehow . . . I'm not gonna pretend that wouldn't hurt me, but we'll get through it, we'll get by. We'll go before God and he will heal us. I know he will. You're a good man, baby. No one knows that better than I do. You're a good man, just not . . . just not perfect is all. And I will live with that and so will you and we will get by, but . . . I think I've got to know the truth, when all is said and done. That's what God sent me to know when I prayed. I think it'd help me to know there's not just lying between us. You understand? Because that would mean you were just treating me like a fool. So that's why I think it's better you tell me the truth now and get it on over with. So why don't you do that—right now, baby. Right now.”

Zach prepared himself with a deep breath before he lowered his hand from his face and looked at her. Ah, but that breath—that wasn't enough preparation, not by half. Because looking at her was different this time than it had ever been before, and the sight of her pierced him to the heart.

He had never really known her; Grace. He had never understood her inner world or workings. He had never even thought that he had. He had taken her as she appeared to him, a Proverbs 31 woman like his mama—his sweet, his simple, his innocent angel, his home girl, his Bible girl—but he had always known that that didn't describe the full depths of her. How could it? No one was like that all the way down—probably not even his mama, though if she wasn't, he didn't want to know. But that was the way she behaved—Grace—that was how she appeared to him, so that was how he took her.

And it wasn't that he suddenly understood her now either. It was just that—in the brutal clarity of his remorse, in the urgency of this crossroad moment—he saw her more fully than perhaps he had before. He sensed her, for that moment, as a woman of considerations. A complete woman who had chosen, out of the complex muddle of her doubts and terrors, despite her temptations and the anxieties that gnawed at her in the lightless hours—had chosen her simplicity, that simplicity that he loved. What to him was her sweetness was, to her, the work of her life, as he was the work of her life, and the children were. She had chosen them, and all the regrets that came with them, all the regrets that come with choosing anything.

That was what he saw. And he didn't know why this made it easier to tell her the truth. Maybe it was just easier to confess to a human being than to an angel. Or maybe it just made more sense to him that way. After all, as she said, she was not stupid, not a fool. And the fact was that she was his woman—his only woman—forever. The fact was he had wronged her. The fact was she had the right to choose whether to forgive him or not. He was a man; he could face the facts. She was a woman; so could she. Maybe it was just that.

“She saw my picture in the paper and made a project out of me. You know, targeted me,” he told her.

“Of course she did. Because you were a hero,” said Grace. “Some folks have to remake everything into themselves.”

It was the kindest thing she could have said, and he realized with a pang that she had chosen this too, chosen to say it, in the midst of what must have been her terrible hurt and sorrow.

“I went up there that night because she threatened to tell you about . . . the one time we were together. Ah, God, Grace, I am so sorry.”

“I know.”

“I got a thousand reasons, a thousand excuses for it, a thousand lame stories I could tell you. I won't, though. It would be a disrespect to you.”

“It would.”

“I did wrong, Grace. I was standing there and I could've done right and I did wrong, and if I could take it back . . . I am just so sorry.”

“God will heal us,” she tried to say, though she was crying hard now, shaking her head, forlorn. “I know he will.”

“I went up there that night. I told her I wouldn't be blackmailed. I wouldn't live lying to you. I did tell her that, I swear I did.”

“I know you did, baby. I believe you, don't worry.”

“She didn't care,” he went on. “She had this whole fantasy about me loving her, wanting her. She thought. . . . It was crazy. I don't even know how to tell you.”

Grace nodded her understanding. She couldn't speak anymore. The tears had overwhelmed her.

He opened his mouth again, trying to think how he could ever explain to her what had happened next, his metamorphosis, how Margo had died. He was just about to stumble on, just about to try to find a way to break the rest of the terrible truth to her. . . .

But here—as he approached the very core of the matter—as he stepped into the center of the whirlwind he had created for them—a strange thing happened.

He solved the case of Dominic Abend. He realized where he could find the man. And he knew what he had to do.

It was Grace—she was the last piece of the puzzle. It was seeing her in that new light that helped him understand the rest. It was Grace and her choices and the body of Angela Bose, bloodless and withered nearly to the bone, and that shifting thing that had approached him in the forest, in the heart of the storm, a few hours ago, that mutating presence and its incomprehensible mutter, which was a darkness beyond the world speaking into his own mind, and the echo of his own mind answering. He remembered Imogen's words:
A force that can't become real without a human will to embody it.
And that made him think about Goulart, how Goulart had snapped at him:
You think that lowlife Kraut piece of shit has enough money to buy me with?
Which brought him back to Grace, who had said of Goulart:
There comes a time in a person's life when doing wrong just makes perfect sense to him. That's when the Enemy can make his move on him.

Grace's choices, the will she embodied, the voice in the woods, Goulart's choices . . . in a cascade of simultaneous deductions, Zach realized what Goulart had done and where Abend was waiting for him. He knew what would happen next, and he knew that he, Zach—he alone—was the only person alive who could stop it, the only man on earth who could destroy this near-eternal gangster before the force he had unleashed spread everywhere and corrupted everything.

He understood that the job was his alone to do and that, if he was going to succeed, he had to do it now. There was one more night of the full moon, the final night for Abend to use the dagger before its power deserted him, the final night for Zach to heal the rift in reality through which the evil had come, to bring the wolf and the dagger back together again and finally end them both. He knew where he had to go, and there was only just enough time for him to get there. With the storm, with the traffic, with the rush hour, it might already be too late. But he had to try. Alone. Right now.

He was still looking at Grace, his lips parted, the unbelievable truth of Margo's death on the tip of his tongue. She had lowered her eyes to her picture frame. Her tears were falling onto the glass. They seeped into the crack and ran along the line of it. Outside, the rain fell harder. A gust of wind made it splatter against the windows.

Time was passing. Night was coming. The moon. He had to go.

He sat down at the table beside her. He took her hand again, held it in both his hands this time, as she'd held his.

“Listen to me, Grace. There's more to say between us, I know. A lot more. But I can't say it now.”

Sobbing, she looked up at him. She shook her head again, bewildered, forlorn.

“I have to leave here,” he said. “I know where Dominic Abend is—or where he's going to be.”

Grace drew herself up, taking a large breath, steadying.

“If I'm lucky and fast, I'm going to meet him there,” Zach went on. “If I'm very lucky and very fast, I'm going to kill him.”

Fighting back her tears, Grace managed to nod.

He went on: “And if I don't come back—”

“Zach!” she said, her voice shuddering.

“If I don't come back. . . . There's only one thing you need to know, okay? One thing you always have to remember.” He held her hand in his. She waited, crying. He swallowed hard. “I don't have the words to tell you what you are to me, all you are. But it's everything,” he said. “If I could reach into the past. . . .” He shook his head, choked up. That wasn't what he wanted to say. He continued: “Just . . . don't ever for a second . . . if you're alone, or if it's the night and you're awake, thinking about things . . . if I'm not here anymore—”

“No. . . .”

“If I'm not here. Don't you ever for a second believe that I ever loved any other woman but you. You understand me? Don't you believe that, Grace. Because that would be a damned lie. That would be. . . .” He couldn't continue. He merely gripped her hand harder.

Then he stood up. “I'm so sorry,” he managed to say again.

Without another word, he turned away from her and walked through the living room to the door.

“Don't you let that man hurt you, baby!” Grace cried out behind him, her voice ravaged with tears. She stood up so fast, her chair fell over with a clatter. She raised her fist at him. “Don't you let that bad man hurt you!”

Zach walked out of the house into the rain.

30

WINDWARD

I
n the Crown Vic, behind the wheel, Zach fed Goulart's number into the tracking app on his phone. It was no good. Goulart was offline. That figured. But it didn't matter. He knew where his partner was going.

Windward Mansion. It was a ruin north of the city, in the woods above the Hudson River. Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell had told him about it back when all this started. Goulart had made several trips there in the middle of the night, she said. She had thought he was using it as a message drop. But that wasn't it. And nothing Goulart had said about his illness could explain those visits either.

Because he was going there to meet Abend. It was their contact place, their rendezvous. That was the only scenario that made sense. And if that's where they met, if that was their spot, then that was where Abend would be tonight—because tonight the gangster would be meeting Goulart one last time to pay him what he owed.

The moon would come up about forty minutes later tonight than last night. That meant there were about two and half hours until moonrise. On a good day, with no traffic, the drive to Windward would be two hours long at least. But the storm had snarled the highways—Zach had seen it on the drive back from Connecticut. He wasn't sure he could make the journey in time. And he felt a strangling fear of what would happen if the moon caught him before he got there.

He used the traffic gizmo on his phone to chart his course. He used the Kojak light and the siren to clear the way. The flasher and the noise carved out stretches of space for him on the passing lane of the Throgs Neck Bridge. The East River and Long Island Sound clashed black and turbulent below him as the Crown Vic raced past the trudging parade of home-bound cars. Not as bad as he'd feared it would be. Still another half hour before the rush began in earnest. He had that much going for him, at least.

Out of the city, the traffic got better, but the storm grew worse. The lightning and thunder returned full force, and for long stretches the rain dropped in enormous gobbets that exploded on the windshield and seemed to melt the view into a blurred, running mess. Zach kept his foot heavy on the gas. He never touched the brake. On the Hutchinson River Parkway, he hit puddles of flood where the water arced up from either side of the car like silver wings and the tires hydroplaned and lost all traction. He felt the car sledding out of control, but he never slowed. Somehow, the tires caught again before the winding road wound away from him. The light flashing, the siren screaming, the Crown Vic raced on.

His phone buzzed where it lay on the passenger seat. The readout told him it was Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell. He didn't answer. Rebecca was redeemed in his eyes now. She was self-serious and political, but honest, untouched by Abend. She had sniffed out Goulart's corruption and tried to bring him down. She'd had plenty of personal grudges to spur her on, but she'd been in the right of it and that's what counted in the end. Still, he let the phone buzz on. Only he could do this. Anyone else would only be in the way. It was better to trust no one now. Better, in fact, to stay off the air.

He reached to turn his phone off so he couldn't be tracked, but before he did, it buzzed again. Goulart this time. Back online. That surprised him. His partner must be getting nervous, wondering where Zach was.

Zach picked the phone up. Keeping half an eye on the rain-drenched windshield, he called up his own tracking app. It found Goulart—on the same highway, about twenty miles behind him.
Good,
he thought. He turned his phone off, even as Goulart tried to call him again. He thought:
We'll meet soon enough, face to face.

By this time, the lightning was striking over and over rapidly. The sky lit up everywhere, flickered and went dark, and flickered again. The thunder crashed so massively, it made the car rattle. And the rain, which already seemed to be falling harder than rain could ever fall, fell harder yet. Now too, after a while, when the lightning struck, when the flickering ended, the sky was darker than it had been before. Night was near.