BLUE BLOOD RUNS COLD (A Michael Ross Novel Book 1) (16 page)

              “But this is an illusion. It is a self-deception practiced by those who prefer the easy comfort of lies to the difficult edification of the truth. It is a hollow knowledge, one that you soon see beyond. You know that in another five thousand years, you will be dust in the ground, perhaps a skeleton in a museum. If you are remembered at all, it will be as a footnote in the backwaters of the most tedious histories. Knowing this, why struggle? Why work hard? Why do anything?

              “Only through the application of narcotics can people truly forget the anguish that comes from the knowledge of one's own meaningless existence. The mind is set at ease, the body is set at rest. Personal ennui is no more. Surely this is for the best, is it not? Put down your weapon, Detective, and let me take the third six that I may bring comfort and peace to those who suffer.”

              Michael held his gun in place. He pointed the sights directly at the man's chest. He said, “It sounds like you're talking about yourself, pal. You sure this Abaddon business isn't just something you cooked up in your head to excuse yourself out of breaking the law?”

              Theodore let his arms fall to his sides. He pulled his attention away from the ceiling and looked straight at Michael. In the moonlight that came in through the open door, he saw the face of a man who had really had suffered a break with reality. There would be no going back for Theodore Kenny.

              He said, “You do not believe? Alas, it is a pity. But then, a refusal to cooperate is not unexpected. Your stubbornness has been anticipated. The way has been prepared.”

              Theodore's hand went to the back of his pants. Michael yelled, “Don't do it! I'll shoot! Take your hand away from–”

              Then, a gunshot rang out in the mobile home. There was an intense flash of light in the darkness, followed the smell of cordite.

3

              Billy's phone rang in the middle of the night. An alarm clock on his dresser gave the time as 2:17 a.m. in angry red numbers. He had set his alarm for 5:30 so that he could get a shower and check the weather before he left. The phone's ringtone, pleasant at all other times, now only caused fear to take hold in him. Something had happened. He did not know what, but more than likely, it would be something to do with the case. Even half-awake, he remembered that Bailey had been killed at roughly the same time as well. Had the killer struck again?

              He picked up his phone and said, “Mmm, hello.”

              A voice said, “Billy, I've got a dead body in my house.”

              Billy sat up in bed. As he did so, his wife stirred beside him. He said, “Hey Mikey, is that you? What do you mean, you've got a dead body?”

              When he heard everything that happened within the last twenty minutes, Billy McGee sighed with relief. He said, “Did you call the cops?”

              “I already called a cop. I called you.”

              “Mikey, hang up the damn phone and dial 911. Don't leave the scene, don't do anything stupid, you know the drill. I'll be there shortly.”

              “Yeah, yeah. I know the drill. See you shortly, partner.”

4

              St. Andrews Episcopal Church sat at the top of a sloping road. At the end of the road the Shippensburg University entrance sign had settled into the ground so that it sat at an angle. By request, the vicar had been asked to come in at seven in the morning, two hours earlier than he had intended. He had come in, unlocked the doors for Michael and Billy, then led them to his office. He sat down behind a large mahogany desk upon which had been placed a worn bible held together with packing tape, a daily calendar with devotional messages for each day, and a stack of business cards.

              The vicar had come dressed in a long black cassock robe with a square of white appearing at his neck. A white hood, called a suplice, rested on the back of his office chair, together with a long black scarf called a chasuble. He had short graying hair and an untrimmed salt-and-pepper beard. He placed a pair of glasses before him on his desk, pressing a handkerchief to his forehead. Even though the heating had been left at sixty-five overnight, leaving the church feeling somewhat chilly, the vicar began to sweat just sitting at his desk while the two detectives waited for him to speak.

              At last, he said, “I feared that this day would come. I hoped that it would not. I hoped and prayed with all my heart that it would not come. Yet it has. Your presence here is enough to tell me that something has gone terribly wrong.”

              Michael said, “Father, how much do you of what has happened in the last few days?”

              Lester Nathan shook his head once, then said, “I'm afraid I don't know much of anything. Something has happened, hasn't it?”

              Michael explained as best as he could what had happened at the university, including the deaths of Jolanda Price and Kevin Bailey, the assault on Shannon Moore, and the death of Theodore Kenny. When he finished, he said, “There's a lot of loose ends left in this case, though. We have a criminal operation of unknown size and scope being carried out at Shippensburg for the purpose of trafficking illegal drugs. We have a police chief who led a long career in which he served the public and earned its respect turning suddenly on his ear into a psychotic killer. He called himself Abaddon, but even I have no idea what that means. I think I remember reading it in the Bible, but...”

              The vicar blanched. His hand trembled while he picked up his worn Bible and put it on his lap. He said, “I can tell you as much as I know about Abaddon, if you wish to hear it.”

              Michael said, “Go ahead. What exactly was he talking about?”

              Lester gulped, then began, “In the Bible, Abaddon refers to a bottomless pit. It is the lake of the dead. It also refers to an angel who turns into a devil. In the book of Revelation, he is the king of the locusts. His Greek name, Apollyon, means 'destroyer.' It is also used three times in the book of Job to mean 'destruction,' twice in chapter twenty-eight, once in chapter thirty-one. Taken literally, it means the ultimate end of life. Depending on who you talk to, Abaddon is either Satan or Christ. The Latter-day Saints believe he is the devil. The Methodists believe he is an angel of the Lord, sent here on Earth to destroy at God's command. The Jehovah's Witnesses believe Abaddon is an incarnation of Christ himself.”

              Something clicked in Michael's memory. He said, “Revelation chapter nine, wasn't it?”

              “Yes, that's the one. So much of what the Bible has to teach has been muddled over the ages. We rarely accept the words written down there as the personal histories they were intended to be, or as religious commandments. We think of them instead as metaphor, using our own experiences and expectations to mold scripture into whatever form we like best. I fear that your suspect did much the same thing, except to an extreme. It often occurs that those who believe they are the chosen of God disregard basic morality and decency, because they believe they are exercising God's will. It has happened throughout history, and continues to happen. I often feel that places like this where the word can be heard in honest simplicity are decreasing by the year. I don't know if anything can be done about it.”

              Michael said, “The candle in the wilderness.”

              “Nothing so grandiose. Just...a quiet voice in a small town. That is enough for me.”

              Billy squirmed in his chair, “This is great and all, but what does any of this have to do with the case? The killer thought he was some kind of angel of death, or what?”

              Michael looked away, deep in thought. He said, “It was more like he thought he was saving people by condemning them to oblivion. At some point, he must have got into the drug trade and found he couldn't back out easily without severe personal consequences. So he finds a no-pressure job he can work by day at a place with any number of clandestine meeting spots by night. Maybe he brings someone along, or maybe someone gets wise to his operation and wants in. That's Kevin Bailey. For reasons we may never know, Bailey kept a revenge list with the names of Shippensburg students on it. Father, when we examined his body, we found a business card in his wallet from here. That's why we've come here. We're hoping you can shed more light on what happened. We've got our suspect, but we don't know anything about why he did what did.”

              Lester Nathan said, “It is a long story. Do you wish to hear it?”

              Billy said, “We don't have nothing but time, and this chair is so comfortable. Take your time and say what you have to say.”

              The vicar began, “It started in the summer of 2001. We were younger then, more foolish. I met Theodore Kenny at a police station after being asked to minister to one of his suspects, or prisoners. To this day, I don't know which. That suspect was Kevin Bailey. He was fourteen years old, and had been brought in on a shoplifting charge. Little did I know that Chief Kenny had a son, one he had disowned years ago. Kevin was that son. He would have been Kevin Kenny if he hadn't taken another last name. So you can see how I might feel disconcerted to hear you tell me that father had killed son.

              “After discharging the task I had been asked to do, I was soon invited to Theodore's house. He wished for me to minister to his wife, who had taken ill. I suggested that he pray for her, while I pray for her, as well. I asked my congregation to pray for her the following Sunday, though none of them knew her name. They knew it was a request from me. They prayed. I fear to confess that she never got better. Rather, her health declined until she had to be admitted to a hospital, there to linger as long as possible until death finally claimed her.

              “I don't need to tell you that I received another call from Theodore asking me to minister to his wife. He wished for me to lay hands of healing on her. Now I had never taken up with those snake charmers and charlatans who parade around in front of crowds offering false hope to those in need. What healing power that does exist in this world comes from God. We must simply wait for him to heal us or leave us be as he chooses. I agreed to that meeting, not because I wished to heal that poor sick woman, but because I wished to offer her comfort in her final days, perhaps listen to her confession if one would be given.

              “When I came to the hospital that day, I found her body had been ravaged by cancer. Half of her face had been eaten away. Her arm had been amputated. What remained had shriveled up as the cancer continued to destroy her body. She could barely speak above a whisper, and when she did, speech pained her. She had to wear an oxygen mask because she no longer had enough strength in her lungs to draw enough breath. She was hooked up to so many machines and wires that I could not tell where the machinery began and her flesh ended. When I saw her lying there, clinging to life with such desperation, in spite of knowing the battle was futile, in spite of all the cancer had already done, I could not help myself. I lay my hands on her stomach. I felt the tubes going into her. I feared that I might catch the cancer myself. But even so, I prayed that she might recover. I prayed for the miracle that her husband hoped for with all his might and used all of his resources to achieve. I prayed as I've never prayed before, or since. I wanted that woman to live, even though I didn't know her name, even though I knew nothing about her, what she had done, or what she might do.

              “She died on a Monday. She hung on for two more weeks, two more impossible weeks that caused no amount of astonishment from the doctors who had long ago detected cancer in her lungs, stomach, and brain. She finally succumbed one day, so weak that her sight and voice had gone. All she could do was touch her fingertips to her husband's hand to let her know that she was still there. Even then, he never gave up hope that something of her might be saved. He asked me to say the burial rites for her, and I agreed to hold the funeral service at my church. I used the church's hardship fund to pay for the funeral. She was buried next to a tree on the Kenny family land, which had been foreclosed upon two years later. Theodore had mortgaged his house three times over and taken out loans from anybody who would listen to pay for the medical costs that his insurance plan would not cover. I'm not surprised to learn that he got into the drug trade; he would have had to in order to pay back everything he owed.

              “Since he gave me no instructions one way or the other, I thought that I should inform Kevin about what had happened to his mother. I found him in a halfway house for boys. How do I describe it? Not quite a prison, not quite a dormitory. Something in-between. I sat down and talked to him for a long time. He had many questions about what she had looked like, whether she thought of him at all. Kevin had not been invited to the funeral, you see. Perhaps I should have brought him myself, yet I did not want to interfere. Today, I regret that decision. I should have let him come, if only so that he could gain closure.

              “Afterward, Theodore and his son became closer than they had before, perhaps out of a mutual emotional need, perhaps because they had no one else in the world. They attended mass at my church with more regularity than they had before. One day, Theodore invited me to come with him to meet his friends. Because he had been coming regularly, because he sang the hymns and ate the bread of communion, I confess that I was rather partial to the idea. Though he still worked as a police officer, he had come to live in a private religious community. The residents there practiced an unusual form of religion that blended Christian and Muslim traditions together. They called themselves the Prophesiers. They believed that they had all been endowed with special powers that set them apart from other people. Each of them believed they had gained their power after a tragedy in the family, or a separation from their spouses. One of their number included a man named Steven Clifton.”