Damnable Read online

  There wasn’t much time to think it through. If what Wright had told him about Lucas Sherman was true, the man was a sociopath, a stone killer. And whatever she was hiding, there was no reason to think she had lied about that. That left few options. He could run after Wright and Maloney, tell them what he saw, but by the time they listened to him, something could already have happened. He decided he had to act.

  He sprinted toward the door and surged into the room. The space was quiet, peaceful. Empty, but for the patient. The early afternoon light made it bright, gave it an almost cheerful yellow tint. The person in the bed was obviously a woman, feminine even in awkward repose, with a spill of long dark hair pooled next to her gauze-wrapped head. The bed was surrounded by a roll cage of traction rails, looking like a dune buggy, with a trapeze handle hanging down from a crossbar. Hatcher swept from corner to corner, stooped to check beneath the bed. No one else, just a chair, an IV bag on a stand, a tall monitor of some kind. And the woman. Her arms were in casts and one side of her face was bandaged, the other side bruised. He shifted his attention to the bathroom, where the door was partially closed. The door was sturdy, industrial-grade, with a scratched metal kick plate and a push handle instead of a knob. He stepped toward it, listened, then gave it a hard shove. The door slammed against something with a thud, producing a grunt from behind it, then swung back hard into him. Sherman leapt out from behind it and flung the door all the way open, clearing a path and lunging at Hatcher in a single, fluid motion. He wrapped his hands around Hatcher’s neck and charged forward, driving Hatcher back.

  The grip on his throat meant he didn’t have time for anything fancy, so he immediately focused on finding vulnerable points in the attack. This type of bull rush was crude but effective. Sherman’s hands were strong, his arms like chiseled pieces of granite forcing him backward. Hatcher could feel the blood to his brain being cut off, felt his airways being shut down. He dropped the flowers, reached up, and grabbed hold of Sherman’s shirt with both hands as he backpedaled rapidly. The calculation was almost an unconscious one. A few feet of space to his rear. Two steps, and on the third he dropped. Straight down, all his weight, pulling one knee to his chest and kicking the other leg out between Sherman’s ankles.

  Sherman’s own momentum did most of the work. Hatcher’s deadweight yank on his shirt catapulted the man forward, over Hatcher’s falling body, slamming Sherman’s head into the solid wall. The impact made a helmet-to-helmet sound, a hard pop with no echo. Sherman snapped back, like a ricochet, hands shooting to his head, and dropped to the floor. He crawled aimlessly toward the far corner of the room, moaning in obvious pain. Hatcher rolled away onto a knee, hunched over, coughing.

  “What the hell?”

  Hatcher raised his head, still coughing and cradling his throat. Detective Wright was in the doorway. Her brow was wrinkled, her eyes like reflective disks. Her right hand pulled back her jacket, finding the handle of her pistol as she scanned the room. At the sight of Sherman on the floor, curled like a fetus and rocking, she drew the gun and brought it forward into a two-hand grip with a slap of knuckles against her palm.

  A solid Weaver-ready position, Hatcher noted. He swallowed, trying to clear his throat so he could communicate.

  She leaned back out the doorway, twisting her head a bit to her right. But never taking her eyes off of Sherman. “Dan!”

  Hatcher started to speak, then saw a man appear in the hallway behind her, coming into view from her left. He was large, a full head taller than she was, bald, except for short-cropped fuzz on the sides, wearing a hospital robe that was flapping open. His stare seemed fixed as he closed in. His left arm was raised in front of him.

  “Behind you!” Hatcher said, pointing and yelling as loudly as his throat would let him.

  Wright started to turn her head, but the man grabbed a hold of it by her ponytail and threw her backward. She tumbled across the hall, bouncing off the opposite wall, dropping her gun and landing on the side of her face.

  The man didn’t bother to look back at her. He walked into the room, a stilted, rocking gait, and toward the woman in the bed, ignoring Hatcher. His skin was pale, almost a shade of gray. Hatcher saw he was holding a scalpel in his right hand.

  Hatcher jumped to his feet and drove his shoulder into the man’s ribs, tackling him and knocking him back against a wooden chair that slid out of the way as they crashed to the ground. The scalpel slid across the floor and rattled against the wall. Once off their feet, Hatcher pumped two hard, driving punches into the man’s solar plexus. He followed them with a palm-heel strike to the forehead that bounced the man’s skull off the hard floor and added a reverse knife hand to the side of his throat.

  Satisfied the threat had been neutralized, Hatcher rolled off, leaning back against the wall to catch his breath, his throat still sore. Wright, he thought. He had to check on her. He pushed himself off the ground and was almost standing when he realized the man was getting up.

  Getting up and not even breathing hard. Hatcher stared, waiting for the man to collapse. He’d seen it before. Guys who’d been seriously injured or battered not seeming to feel the effects for a few seconds. Only this man didn’t collapse or double over. He used the chair to lift himself to his feet and stood erect, clumsy and unbalanced, his robe obscenely twisted, exposing his flabby abdomen and dark, flaccid genitals. Hatcher realized the man not only wasn’t breathing hard, he didn’t seem to be breathing at all.

  The man picked up the chair by its backing with both hands and stepped forward, swinging it at Hatcher. Hatcher ducked, hearing and feeling parts of the wood frame splinter a foot above him. He took aim and threw a roundhouse hook, spinning into it, zeroing in on the floating rib beneath the man’s arm. He felt his knuckles connect through the flabby padding over the man’s rib cage, thought he could feel it give, maybe even hear the muffled snap of the bone beneath.

  Then the inside of his head seemed to explode as the man slammed what was left of the chair down against the top of his skull. He stumbled back against the wall, his eyes clenched, his jaw locked, weathering the pain. The man had already turned his back to him by the time Hatcher opened his eyes. Hatcher saw him pick up the scalpel and stand. He was facing the woman.

  His head screaming, Hatcher’s eyes locked on the traction bars framing the bed. He jumped up and grabbed hold of the near-side traction railing above it. He swung himself up, flung his legs over the man’s shoulders, crossed his ankles, and locked them.

  He gave himself a combat reminder, disengaged the natural safety mechanisms in his brain as he committed. This isn’t training. This isn’t a potential friendly. Don’t hold back.

  In a quick series of moves blended into one rapid sequence, he let go of the rod and twisted his body violently at the hips, slapping the floor with his palms as he landed, the side of his face barely missing a broken piece of chair. He unhooked his ankles and pulled his legs out. There was no doubt this time. He’d felt the pop. Heard the crack.

  He took a breath and slowly pushed himself to his feet. The man was lying on the floor, facedown. At first it was exactly what Hatcher expected to see. Heap of a body, misshapen neck. But then the man lifted his elbows and pushed himself up, getting to one knee. His hand found the side bed rail and he pulled himself the rest of the way.

  Hatcher hesitated, uncertain what to do. This was all wrong. The man was standing again. His head was horribly offset, his neck crooked and bulging on one side. He wasn’t huffing, wasn’t groaning, wasn’t bleeding, wasn’t doing anything, except getting up again. Getting up and still holding the scalpel.

  As if sensing Hatcher’s confusion, the man turned toward the woman, sliding along the bed rail toward her head and upper body. Hatcher’s eyes ricocheted around the room. If he was going to stop this, he needed a weapon. His gaze bounced to his feet, where a leg of the chair lay, the end of it still connected to a shard of the seat frame. Hatcher grabbed it and lunged, swinging it like a hatchet.

  The end st
ruck the man in the back of the head, near the base of his skull. The sharp, sharded edge tomahawked deeply, burying a few inches of wood through the bone.

  The man stiffened. He turned until he was facing Hatcher’s direction, eyes rolled up and out of sight, mouth agape. A pointy piece of wood, its sharp blond tip streaked with red and hung with chunks of gristle, was visible in his mouth like an extra tongue. He stood motionless for a few seconds, then fell forward onto his face.

  Hatcher watched the body for movement, waiting several seconds longer than he normally would, then leaned back against the wall. His chest and lungs ached from the adrenaline surge, his muscles suddenly heavy and deflated. He bent forward and placed his hands on his knees.

  “Police! Don’t move!”

  Wearily, Hatcher raised his eyes. Lieutenant Maloney was holding a stainless-steel revolver, the barrel leveled at Hatcher’s face. Somewhere in the cacophony of thoughts competing with the pulse in his head, he decided the lieutenant’s form wasn’t as good as Wright’s.

  Maloney barked at him to turn around, spread his legs, and place his hands on his head and his chest against the wall. Hatcher mustered the energy to shoot a glance over to the far corner of the room as he did.

  The cuffs dug into his wrists, but he didn’t make a sound. This was going to be complicated. He hoped that Wright had seen enough to back him up. And, more important, that she’d be willing to, that she was one of those rare cops that cared about the truth more than the collar. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he did know there was only going to be one arrest today. At least for now.

  Lucas Sherman was gone.

  CHAPTER 7

  VALENTINE STOOD IN FRONT OF THE GRACE CHURCH altar and studied the scenes; saints with fishbowl halos depicted in mosaic, receiving instructions from their Savior. The morning sun blazed through the traceried stained glass above him, igniting the panels into glowing arrays of color, a molten rainbow of pigments reaching down through the triangles of ornate ivory atop the iconography. Fingers of light stretching from Heaven.

  “Have you ever taken the time to appreciate biblical art, Lucas? It’s all around us, you know.”

  “No, Boss,” Lucas said. He was standing next to Valentine, holding his head. “Never was much for that stuff.”

  “You really should. Society, for all its trappings of faith, has become biblically illiterate, especially over the past few decades. That’s made representations such as these almost meaningless to the average person. But there is so much to be learned from them. It is only through understanding the Bible that we see man in his true context, that we can hope to understand the eschatological underpinning of society.”

  Valentine moved along the chancel. His footsteps echoed in the open expanse of vaulted nave. Lucas trailed him reluctantly, wincing with each step.

  “Take the reredos,” Valentine said, pointing. “French and Italian marble. Pierre de Caen. Such exquisite craftsmanship. Such attention to detail. And the depictions of the Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, surrounding the Risen Christ as he gave his Great Commission. Inspired. Truly inspired.”

  He lifted his gaze to the stained glass. “Or pieces like these. Jacob’s Dream, depicting Jacob having stumbled upon one of the gates to Heaven, his discovery of an elusive pathway to the ultimate, most cherished of places. Windows, in the true, metaphorical sense of the word.”

  Valentine paused, his eyes roaming over the tints and tinges, the bursts of opaque white surrounding candy-glaze reds, chrysanthemum blues, and liquid greens.

  “Do you know why I like it here, Lucas?”

  “No, Boss.”

  “Because you can feel the sense of eternity. In the architecture, in the art, in the stone and the marble. Even the plaster. The Gothic spires, the cruciform designs. So much effort, so much energy. The craftsmanship of the engravings, the simple allure of the stained glass. Representations of devotion, of passion, commitment to an idea on the grandest of scales. I come here because of all those things, all the things you see around us right now. To use them. To remind myself of the immensity, the sheer vastness, of what I intend to accomplish. The men who designed the great houses of worship, like this one, they understood. It is all based on one thing, one driving concept, a paramount force in history. The whole of western civilization rests upon the single most powerful idea ever. Do you know what that idea is?”

  Lucas hitched a shoulder. “No, Boss. Can’t say I do.”

  “Everything, all of it, Lucas, is informed by the notion of salvation. Everything.”

  “It’s real pretty, Boss.”

  “I’m not talking about eye-pleasing aesthetics. Ever notice how similar grand churches like these are to mausoleums? The sober, dim atmosphere, the hard, cold surfaces, the echoing quiet that demands whispers, designs and ornamentation harkening back centuries, millennia, in some cases?”

  “Never really noticed that.”

  “It’s not merely a shared sense of reverence. What they have in common is far more profound. These are places where some primal part of us has realized we are connecting, however indirectly, with something more vast than we can conceive, points where our tiny estuaries of existence come in contact with the raging current of time, flowing off to infinity.”

  “Sounds deep.”

  Valentine huffed a short laugh. “You don’t believe in any of this, do you?”

  “Sure I do, Boss. Whatever it is, this thing you’re planning—” Lucas flinched, clenching his eyes shut and twisting the heel of his palm against his brow. “If anyone can pull it off, I’m sure you can.”

  “It’s all right, Lucas. You don’t need to humor me. I’m not offended. In fact, it’s why I hired you. Because you think it’s all bullshit. That, and your penchant for violence.”

  Lucas nodded, holding his head. “Boss, I, uh, really think I need to go somewhere and lie down.”

  “Yes, of course. But you do want to know why I had you meet me here, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess so.”

  “I’ve picked this place for the Malediction. They’ve relocated the congregation for two weeks. I’m going to need you to make some preparations. I did not want there to be any miscommunication about where or what I was talking about.”

  “Okay, Boss,” Lucas said, nodding like a man balancing something on his crown.

  Valentine placed a hand on his shoulder. “You understand how important this is, don’t you, Lucas? How imperative it is that I succeed, regardless of what you believe?”

  “Real important, Boss. I know. I’m just hurting right now. I’ll be okay, though.”

  Valentine patted his arm gently. “Leave through the front. The police will eventually be keeping tabs on you, but they aren’t at the moment.”

  “So, you’re not mad at me, are you?”

  “No. I’m not mad. You know I don’t get mad. At least, not that easily. Have you ever seen me mad, Lucas?”

  Lucas considered the question, then shook his head, sucking air into his lungs suddenly and grimacing.

  “Thanks for letting me go, Boss.” He let out a long breath and turned to leave. After a step, he hesitated. “What about the gal? You want me to go back?” He squeezed his eyes shut. “When my head’s better, I mean?”

  “She’ll be leaving the hospital soon,” Valentine said, wagging his jaw. “Until then, the authorities will be keeping an eye on her, undoubtedly plan to keep doing so after she’s discharged. Of course, they can only do so much. But the answer is no. I’ve got something else in mind. She’ll be taken care of.”

  “Whatever you say, Boss.” Lucas dipped his chin down as if to nod, but ended up not lifting it, cradling his head in one hand.

  “Go. Get some rest. We’re only days away. I need you fit.”

  Lucas tilted his head back after a moment, squinting against the brilliance of the stained glass stretching high above them, keeping his hand above his eyes in a cupped salute. “Boss, I never really asked, but what do
you have planned? The end of the world or some shit like that?”

  “No, Lucas, not the end of the world.” He swept his gaze across the altar, took in the mosaics, the towering windows of colored glass. “I’m thinking more long term than that.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “LOOK AT IT FROM MY PERSPECTIVE,” MALONEY SAID.

  Hatcher rocked the chair back, trying to keep his weight to the rear. One of the front legs was shorter than the others, and that caused it to wobble at an angle if he tried to sit straight. The more he thought about it, the more he decided it wasn’t a bad touch, though he doubted it was intentional.

  “I mean, we’ve got you in the would-be victim’s room . . .” He extended his left index finger and bent it back with his right one, ticking off a count. “An assaulted cop with a concussion . . .” Another finger. “And a dead body . . .” He pressed a third one down, then held all three up, his thumb across his little finger to keep it pinned. “Which, by your own admission, was in that dead condition courtesy of you. You’re already on the books for twelve months—twelve months you haven’t even finished—in a military prison for something arguably similar. What do you expect us to think?”

  The small room was more or less square and smelled of mildew and Lysol. White, sound-dampening tiles made of material that looked like dirty Styrofoam paneled the walls and ceiling, even covered the door, interrupted only by a large rectangular mirror along the wall to his left. Hatcher was cuffed to a sturdy gray metal table, which made him suspect they had already been in touch with Fort Sill. Gillis was probably more than happy to talk to them when they called, to tell them what a menace he was.