The Dead Soul (36 page)

88

Monday, September 15 – 1:39 P.M

Dickie stood outside the Optimist’s house. He leaned over the hood of his Crown Vic. Trooper Styles by his side. They searched through the GPS’s history. The idea was to find a pattern. Anything that might lead them to Dawn.

“Detective?” A blue walked out the front door. He had a book in his hand.

“Yeah?” Dickie sounded distracted. “Kinda busy here, Officer.”

The cop held up a three-inch-thick version of the King James Bible. “Check this out.”

Several pages were flagged with Post-Its. They all contained a reference to drowning. Dickie read Matthew 18:6 to himself: 
“But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

“Hey, Detective,” another blue yelled from the porch. “We found a laminate machine—must be how he got into that prison to talk to prisoner Micah.”

“Thanks.” Dickie never looked up. He wasn’t paying attention. In his mind, he kept repeating that phrase:
Drowned in the depths of the sea
.

“Detective Shaughnessy?” Trooper Styles was still panning through the GPS files. “I think I know where he keeps his boat. Look.” He pointed to a list of about two dozen trips to the same North Shore marina over the past two weeks.

Dickie stared at the readout. “Same location. He kept going back there.” Then, Dickie took his radio in his hand and keyed, “Jake, you there?”

No answer.

Dickie put the radio against his forehead in frustration.

Drowned in the depths of the sea
.

“Call the Coast Guard and Harbor Patrol, Trooper. Come on. Let’s move.”

89

Monday, September 15 – 1:41 P.M.

The Optimist grabbed Father John by the neck. Whirled him around, using the priest as a shield. He had gone to stab Father John, but thought better of it, stopping mid-strike. He had another idea. Something more practical to his endgame. He whispered in the priest’s ear. “Don’t do anything stupid, Padre.” Then looked at Jake. “Drop that weapon, or I expose the priest’s larynx and juggle with his Adam’s apple.”

Jake obliged. He knelt down, placed his gun on the ground. Stood with his hands raised above his head.

Holding the knife blade to Father John’s neck, the Optimist walked him toward the door. “Open it.” Father did as he was told.

“I’m wondering, are you going to answer that call, Detective? Seems your partner has some information for you. We’ll wait.”

“Call me on my cell, Dickie.” Jake threw his radio at the Optimist, just missing his head.

Jake took out his iPhone, put it between his shoulder and ear. He bent down and picked up his gun. Held it out in front of himself.

The Optimist and the priest stopped in front of a large Judean date palm plant by the door. He leaned down and rubbed his face against the leaves.

Jake dropped the phone from his shoulder on purpose, refocused his attention back on the moment.

“Do you know the story of the Masada, Detective?” The Optimist gripped the priest’s neck tighter. Closed his eyes. Took in a deep breath through his nose. Pinned the knife to Father John’s neck, drawing blood. The priest struggled for air.

“You need to put the knife down, let the priest go. Then tell us where my wife is.” Jake had learned a few things throughout the years. Stay on point. Stick to the basics. Don’t get into any good-and-evil conversations with a perp holding a hostage. It fuels their rage. Most of all, let them do the talking.

“Let me tell you about the Masada. They say the Jews committed suicide on the mountaintop sanctuary of Masada. But that’s not true. Six men killed all the women and children on Masada—with machetes! Can you imagine that? Women and children.”

Father John looked to be changing color. “I’m choking,” he said in a raspy voice. “Please, Randy. Let’s talk about this.”

“Women. Incredible, isn’t it?” The Optimist squeezed a tighter grip on the priest’s neck, jamming the knife even further into his flabby skin. “One of the men then killed the five others afterward, and he—that one man left behind—committed suicide. Masada was not a mass suicide or a massacre by the Romans. It was mass murder, and one suicide. You should know your biblical history, Detective.”

It was hot inside the greenhouse. Jake kept having to rub beads of sweat from his brow. His T-shirt was soaked from his neck down along his spine.

Like the cop he was, Jake ordered, “Get on the ground, put your hands behind your back.”

“… I cannot breathe,” Father John struggled to say.

“I told you, Father,
not
to speak.”

The Optimist backed the priest toward the door.

Jake followed each step, making sure not to crowd the psycho.

With his foot, the Optimist jerked open the door. Then dragged Father John into the small foyer.

Jake rushed to the door, stopped it just before closing.

The Optimist dragged Father John with him up the stairs. At the top was one-way door leading out onto the rooftop.

Jake lost sight of them. He did not walk in. The rest of the team moved closer, swarming around Jake. A blue got on the radio. “He’s heading up to the roof. Get a bird over here now.”

“No helicopter.” Jake sounded firm. “I want the building surrounded. We do not push him.”

“It is already, Detective.”

“Good. Seal off this entryway and any other entrance or exit from the roof. I’m going up there—alone. I don’t want anyone following too close. All he has is a knife.”

“All that we know of, you mean.”

“Right. Whatever. Toss me your radio.”

Jake pulled his foot away from the door, allowed it to close. He put the radio in his back pocket. Took off his windbreaker, dropped it on the ground.

Up on the top stairs landing, Father John gave it one more try. “Please, Randy. Give yourself up. Listen to me. I can help you.”

The Optimist closed his eyes. He bounced the back edge of his knife off the bridge of his nose. He was thinking as he took deep, quick breaths, psyching himself up.

Father John said, “You don’t need to give into evil, Randy.”

The Optimist opened his eyes. Raised his head. Stared eye-level at Father John, looking through him.

He pictured his mother. Her long blonde hair flowing over one side of the bed. Her head jerking up and back as one of those men pumped his way deeper inside. He could hear her moaning.
I like that … harder
. He was in the closet inside her room.
Harder, baby.
She didn’t know he was there.

The little boy closed his eyes.

Harder. Yes. Yes …

Every once in a while he’d open his eyes, look through the slats in the door.
Yes … oh, yes.
His mother’s head bounced as if she were on a horse.

There was a hiccup in his mind. Silence. He snapped out of it. Smiled. Lifted the knife over his shoulder—in what seemed to be slow motion—and stabbed the priest in the chest with one overhead motion, burying the blade somewhere near his heart. He looked into the priest’s eyes, pulling the knife out of him slowly. Then licked the cold steel while watching the life drain out of Father John’s face.

The priest gasped. Grabbed at his chest.

It didn’t take much, but the Optimist gave the priest a nudge. And Father John tumbled down the stairs, finally landing and rolling into the door.

90

Monday, September 15 – 1:59 P.M.

Jake heard a thump. Turned. It came from inside the foyer. He opened the door with caution. Saw Father John struggling to breathe. Hyperventilating, his legs bucked as though he had gone into an epileptic shock.

Jake grabbed the priest by the arm and pulled him into the greenhouse. “Get him some help!” Stepping into the foyer slowly, Jake took a cautionary gaze up the stairs. He did not want to get stabbed in the face if the Optimist was waiting in the shadows of the dark. Kneeling by the railing, using the corner brick as cover, Jake pointed his .357 toward the roof entrance and took a step.

A beam of light brightened the stairway—then it went dark again as Jake heard the door above close.

After hurrying up the stairs and kicking the door open, on top of the roof, Jake looked in all directions.

The Optimist was nowhere to be found.

Walking on the rooftop with guarded composure, Jake thought of what Dickie had said on the phone moments ago. “
We’re on our way to the Back Bay Marina. We think she might be on his boat
.”

Jake knew Dawn was dead. And now he needed to kill her killer. Revenge was all he had left.

Standing on the roof, the Charles River at his back, the wind blew fiercely. Jake could hear the stifled hum of traffic running north and south off in the distance on I-93. He spun around, three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, the city’s blurry skyline twirling in his vision. A part of the building jetted out over the Charles.

Where are you
?

Jake ran toward the south edge. He looked down at the roof of a second building below, the Planetarium. It was connected to the conservatory. Just a short jump—about five feet—down and on top of the next rooftop. It was the only way the Optimist could have gone. Every other area of the roof led to a dead end.

Jake leapt.

Landing on both feet, he heard something. Movement. Stones grinding against shoes.

He turned.

The Optimist popped out from behind a large heating and air-conditioning mechanism. It was taller than him. In between Jake and Optimist was a glass skylight as big as a garage door. They had to be careful, or risk falling through.

The sun burned hot through the wind. Jake could smell the tar from the roof heating up, melting. In all that was going on, he couldn’t get the thought of working construction that one summer before joining the BPD out of his mind, patching potholes all over the city. It was that hot asphalt odor. So distinctive. Memorable. 

The Optimist held his knife as if he were a carnival performer, ready to toss it at Jake like a dart. They stood about ten feet away from each other on opposite sides of the skylight. Jake had a clear shot. He could end it right now.

“You’re finished. Lay down. Put your hands behind your head.”

“Curious. Your partner, Detective. Did he have good news for you?”

“We have her, Meyers. Back Bay Marina. She’s alive.”

The Optimist turned red-faced. He screamed. “Don’t you lie to me! Do you think for one minute I would
allow
her to live?”

Jake felt a pang in his gut. He swallowed. No response.

“Control, Detective. I controlled her destiny—and now you control mine. Funny how it all worked out, huh?”

The Optimist walked closer to the skylight. Tapped his knife on the glass.

“I should just kill you, Meyers. What do we have between us? Nothing. You’re just a piece of shit. A psycho this city could stand to get rid of.”

Lined up along the roof of the building Jake had jumped down from were a group of five officers, each dressed in riot gear, armed with rifles, kneeling, their weapons pointed at the Optimist. Jake spotted them out of the corner of his eye.

The Optimist looked. “I bet you gave orders not to follow, didn’t you?”

Jake made a break for the Optimist, running right at him, screaming as loud as he could to cause a distraction. He had to go around the skylight. As he approached, the Optimist jumped on the skylight, breaking shards of glass in a circular pattern, like splashing water. It was loud and unsettling. A few stray slivers, sharp and pointy as icicles, hit Jake as he got down on his knees and covered himself with his hands.

If he survived the fall, the Optimist was now inside the Planetarium.

Jake got up. Brushed himself off. Looked in the through the hole. It was dark. He could see a ticket counter, a mess of glass, spurs of wood from the broken window frame all over the floor. He stood above the area of the Planetarium where patrons waited in line to get in. Twelve feet down.

Probably not enough to kill the sonofabitch
.

“Surround the inside of the planetarium.” Jake tossed the radio after giving the order. The team of riot police came up behind him. “I’m gonna finish this now for good.”

91

Monday, September 15 – 2:09 P.M.

The Optimist hid under the ticket counter. After jumping through the glass, he hit the ground and rolled. As he did, pieces of glass embedded into different areas of his body. He was huddled in the corner. Cold and shaking, he looked at the cuts all over his hands and legs, several small pieces of glass sticking out of his ankles and elbows. His right side burned. Looking at it, he noticed an elongated, triangular-shaped shard of glass protruding out of his skin near his appendix. Blood flowed from it steadily. It was an odd feeling. There was no significant, throbbing pain from the lesions, but more of a numbing sensation, reminding him that he was supposed to feel pain.

Huddled there in the corner underneath the ticket counter like a wounded animal, that sense of helplessness he had endured after the Teacher chained his leg to the furnace in the basement and abused him came back. He saw Micah grab him by the back of the head—the memory almost an out-of-body experience—and inch his face toward the furnace door as a fire raged inside. He could hear him. “
You tell anyone and I’ll douse you with gasoline and burn you alive.
”

Small shards of glass fell from above as Jake walked around the opening on the roof. He must be contemplating how to jump down, the Optimist considered. The bits of glass fell in front of Rainn Meyers and bounced off the red carpet.

Blood ran down his forearms and the side of his hip. His socks and underwear were saturated.

The Optimist felt the game had played out exactly how he had planned. That “incongruous compound of good and evil” was there in everything he and Jake did. He said those six words over and over in his mind.
Incongruous compound of good and evil.
A quote from the book—
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
—that kept him company all those nights when he believed the world was against him. When he realized his sins had sent him to Bainbridge. Nothing else. Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale had become Randy Meyers’s reality.

Every thought I ever had centered on self
.

There were two of him. He knew that now.

Jake landed directly in front of the counter, his calves facing the Optimist. The trip down from the roof was loud and surely painful.

The killer who could not resist the temptation stared.

As Jake hit the ground, the Optimist stabbed the detective just above his knee, in the meaty ham-shank section of his thigh. As Jake reacted, grabbing his leg and falling on his back, it gave the killer enough time to crawl out from underneath the counter and limp his way into the Planetarium.