Blood Angel Read online

  Also by Bernard Schaffer

  An Unsettled Grave

  The Thief of All Light

  Superbia

  Guns of Seneca 6

  Grendel Unit

  The Girl from Tenerife

  Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes

  BLOOD ANGEL

  BERNARD SCHAFFER

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  I - NOTHING EVER ENDS AND NOTHING EVER GOES AWAY

  1

  2

  3

  FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

  4

  5

  6

  II - LINDA

  7

  8

  9

  III - WEST, SOUTH, AND EAST

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  IV - FAMILY

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 by Bernard Schaffer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2019953571

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-2762-6

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-2762-2

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: June 2020

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2763-3 (ebook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-2763-0 (ebook)

  To Michaela Hamilton and Sharon Pelletier,

  for everything.

  I

  NOTHING EVER ENDS AND NOTHING EVER GOES AWAY

  1

  I am The Master.

  Tucker Pennington spoke these words aloud, wanting them to be true. He cradled the black book to his chest and lowered his head against its cover. “I am The Master,” he whispered, and turned to the first page. He ran his hand delicately across the three invocations written there.

  Blood of the virgin.

  A visage perfected.

  The purified flesh.

  They were written in dark red streaks that stained the page. This ink had dried long ago and left red dust flakes scattered inside the book’s seam. Tucker dragged his finger down the page until his skin was covered in red dust, then he stuck it in his mouth. He sucked his finger until his skin pickled. “Blood of the virgin,” he said. He ran his finger down the page again and sucked it again. He mixed the dried flakes of blood inside his mouth with his spit and swallowed.

  “A visage perfected.” And it had been. By acid.

  The purified flesh was all that remained.

  Tucker looked through his car’s windshield at the Hansen Town Square. Most of the shops were closed for the evening. The town square was a small patch of civilization in the midst of the vast woodlands and gravel roads that surrounded it. People came there to stroll the sidewalks lined with coffee shops and artisan boutiques and secondhand record stores.

  He was parked along the side of the road on Main Street. He could smell the gasoline on his hands. He’d filled the largest gas can he could find at an Exxon ten miles away. It was sitting in a crate in the station wagon’s trunk next to a fire extinguisher and a duffel bag filled with rope and duct tape.

  At last, a girl appeared in the distance. Tanned and blond, in cutoff jeans shorts and a tank top. She was exactly what he’d been looking for. He watched her stand in front of the Walgreens, waiting for someone inside. She smoked a cigarette and flicked the ashes into the storm drain.

  He put his car in drive and drove toward the Walgreens. She turned at the car’s approach and he realized they knew one another. He’d gone to school with Brenda Drake since third grade. She’d been a scrawny, giggling thing in pigtails back then. He still remembered her crooked smile in their class photograph from that year. Now, she was glowing with life.

  You’ll glow brighter still, he thought. Much brighter.

  Tucker parked along the curb next to her and got out. Brenda flicked her cigarette away and ran her fingers through her long hair and said, “Hey, Tucker.”

  He stepped up onto the sidewalk next to her. “What are you doing out and about?”

  “Waiting for my mom,” Brenda said. “She gives me so much shit for smoking.”

  “Do you have another one?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I just like fire.”

  Brenda laughed and said, “You’re so weird.” She opened her purse and dug inside, then held the bag at one end and tilted it downward. She shuffled through the makeup and tissues and hair bands piled inside.

  Tucker reached back and opened his station wagon’s passenger door. No one was watching from the Walgreens. No one was walking down the street. No one was driving past.

  “Here you go,” Brenda said. She pulled a crumpled cigarette out of the purse and held it out toward him.

  Tucker snatched her by the head with both hands. He wrenched her sideways over his hip, sending her body windmilling into the air as he drove her headfirst into the cement. Tucker stood up to catch his breath and see if anyone was looking. Brenda’s arms and legs convulsed on the sidewalk.

  He scooped her up by the arms and dragged her toward the station wagon’s open door. He shoved her through the open door and slammed it shut, then raced around the other side and jumped in.

  A woman ran out of the Walgreens, screaming for him to stop. She ran toward the sidewalk, flapping her arms, screaming for help.

  Tucker stomped on the gas pedal and sped away.

  Brenda slumped against the car window, smearing the glass with lipstick and drool. White foam was spilling out of her mouth. He touched her bare arm and the side of her face as he drove. He eased her back in her seat. He stroked her hair to move it away from her face. Her skin was so pure, so perfect. But not purified. Not yet.

  * * *

  The interior of their county detective car was a mess because of the way Bill Waylon ate on nighttime surveillance details. Empty coffee cups and candy bar wrappers were scattered on the passenger side floor so that every time Jacob Rein moved his feet, he was stepping in trash. Waylon finished the last of his latest extralarge coffee and tossed the cup into the backseat. Drips of coffee clung to Waylon’s patchy mustache and he mopped them gingerly with a napkin, like he was afraid the hot liquid might burn away the struggling hairs on his lip.

  Waylon was ten years older than Rein. He’d been a detective with the Vieira County District Attorney’s Office a few years before Rein hired on. Waylon had the misfortune, as he often said, of being the only person in the office who could tolerate Rein long enough to work with him. For a police officer, having a partner is like being in a marriage. When it’s bad, it’s bad all around and infects everything. When it’s good, the world just goes easier. But just like marriage, even the good ones, you still have to put up with the other person’s shit.

  “It’s not this guy. He’s too old,” Waylon said.

  They were parked deep in the woods on a hillside overlooking the dilapidated farmhouse that belonged to Walter Krissing. The Krissing family owned that farm for generations. It had once been the main
source of corn for that entire region. Now it was nothing more than the broken-down old house and acres of brown, untended fields.

  Rein raised his binoculars to check the house’s windows. Each one was dark and hidden behind blinds.

  “No way a guy that old can even get it up anymore,” Waylon said.

  “These aren’t sex crimes, Bill,” Rein said. He leaned forward to inspect the windows on the second floor. There was nothing. “Our suspect is a sadist. The pleasure he feels is from the grief he causes. Hearing his victims shriek is what gets him off. “

  “Well, he’s too weak, then. Whoever our doer is, he’s gotta be strong enough to manhandle these kids. Think about it. Some of them are teenagers. Shit, my little one, Katie, threw a tantrum in the store the other day and it was all I could do to hold on to her when she started kicking, and she’s only two. So first, this old man has to grab them, then he has to subdue them, then he’s got to get them all the way back to his layer,” Waylon said, ticking the points off with his fingers.

  “Layer?”

  “What villains have,” Waylon said. “Then, he’s got to get them inside and do what he does, even if they fight back. After all that, he’s got to get rid of the bodies. You and I know how heavy dead bodies are better than most people. My back hurts all the time from the bodies I’ve had to drag all over the place. I’m telling you, it’s not this guy. Krissing is too old for all that.”

  “What if he has help?” Rein asked.

  “Two sickos working together?”

  “Or he’s using one of the children. A strong young male, specifically recruited and groomed for that exact purpose. It’s probably not hard for him to find children willing to go with him back to his house.”

  “What kind of kid goes with some creepy old dude in this day and age?” Waylon said. “Kids learn about stranger danger on the first day of school now.”

  “Kids that want drugs,” Rein said. “Or alcohol. Or money. Or maybe just food and shelter, if they’re on the streets. Attention, if they come from screwed-up families. There are a million ways to exploit people in need, Bill. All it takes is insight and willpower to do it.”

  “There’s some really sick shit going on inside that head of yours, isn’t there?” Waylon said. “A child rapist and murderer using one of his victims to help him with the other victims? Come on, man. This isn’t the movies. In real life, it’s always something a lot simpler. It’s always the uncle or the mom’s boyfriend.”

  “Between 1970 and 1973, twenty-eight boys went missing in Houston,” Rein said. “Dean Corll’s family owned a candy factory in the area, and he was always handing out free goodies to the kids in the area. They called him the Candy Man.” He lowered his binoculars, giving his eyes a rest. The entire house was dark below. The truck in the driveway hadn’t moved all night. He checked the dial on the police radio in the center console, making sure it was on, but that it was low enough not to make too much noise.

  “Corll had recruited two teenage helpers,” Rein continued. “It was their job to lure their friends over to his house so he could rape, torture, and murder them.”

  “What pieces of shit. How’d they catch him?” Waylon asked.

  “One of the accomplices shot him.”

  “Well, let’s hope that happens here,” Waylon said.

  “I’d rather catch him before he hurts anyone else, instead,” Rein said, raising the binoculars to check once more.

  “You know what I meant. I gotta piss again,” Waylon said. He grabbed the door handle and threw it open before Rein could stop him.

  Light flooded the car interior and flared inside the binocular lenses. Rein clenched his eyes shut, blinded. “Bill!” he hissed, trying to keep his voice down.

  Waylon left the door open as he hurried to the nearest tree and unzipped his pants. “Hang on,” Waylon said.

  “Shut the damn door,” Rein whispered, rubbing his eyes until he could see again.

  “Give me a damn second,” Waylon said, bouncing up and down on his heels to shake off and then zippering himself back up. He raced back to the car and slid in. “Sorry about that. It’s the coffee.”

  “When you open the door, the light comes on,” Rein said. “When the light comes on, we stand out in the darkness, and the bad guy can see us. Do you understand that?”

  “What do you want me to do, piss through the window?”

  Rein reached behind the seat and picked up Waylon’s discarded coffee cup, “Go in this next time.”

  Waylon scowled. “I can’t piss in a coffee cup sitting down in the car. What if I spill it on myself?”

  “It’s better than lighting us up and letting everyone know where we are,” Rein said.

  Waylon looked at the cup, then down at the house below. “How do we know he’s home anyway? It’s dark as hell in there.”

  “You know, you’re right,” Rein said. “Maybe he’s not home. Maybe he’s out here in the woods somewhere looking for victims. Lucky for him there’s two imbeciles sitting in a police car that he saw a mile away because one keeps opening his door!”

  “God damn, I’m sorry. I have to piss again,” Waylon said, pulling the door handle. “I broke the seal.”

  “If he kidnaps us, I hope he rapes you first,” Rein said. “I really do.”

  “He probably likes skinny guys who read a lot,” Waylon said over his shoulder.

  “Not with that 1970’s porno mustache you keep trying to grow,” Rein said. “You’re definitely his first choice.”

  “You making fun of the Burt Reynolds?” Waylon asked, getting back into the car and shutting the door.

  “I thought it was the Tom Selleck,” Rein said.

  “I switched it back. Burt Reynolds is a classic. Just like me.”

  A high-pitched tone sounded on the police radio. The radio was turned down so low that both of them had to lean forward to hear it. Every cop in the world is trained to stop everything at the sound of that kind of tone. It’s the kind that only sounds when a fellow police officer is in imminent danger, or something really fucked up is about is about to come out over the radio.

  They waited. A second later the dispatcher reported, “Female abduction at Main Street and Grove Hollow Road, Hansen Township. All units in the area please respond.”

  Waylon slammed the car into reverse so hard that Rein had to brace himself against the dashboard.

  “Careful on this turn, Bill,” Rein said, seeing the steep embankment off the side of the road. “Slow down, shit!” he shouted as the car bounced so hard, he whacked his head on the roof. He yanked his seat belt across his chest, trying to click it as Waylon spun the wheel, sending gravel and dirt flying. “We’re no good to anyone if you wreck before we get there,” he said, seeing trees whipping past them in the headlights as Waylon jammed the gas pedal to the floor.

  “How far?” Waylon shouted, spinning the wheel into the turn to keep the car righted as the road veered to one side.

  “Make a right at the next—” Rein called out, slamming into the door handle. He grabbed the leather strap dangling from the ceiling and grabbed on to it with both hands.

  “Caller reports her sixteen-year-old daughter was abducted by force,” the dispatcher continued. “Suspect is a white male, light brown hair, driving a station wagon. Caller believes it’s her daughter’s classmate, name unknown, no direction of travel.”

  Rein raised the radio mic, trying to hold it steady enough to click the button. “County detectives in the area, we’re en route,” Rein called out. “Any weapons displayed?”

  “Nothing at this time,” the dispatcher said. “Hard to get any info out of the caller. All she’s doing is screaming.”

  The radio came alive with chatter. Four other police departments were assigned to that radio zone, and each of them only had one cop working. They were all coming. The state police units covering the unincorporated areas outside of those jurisdictions were coming. Even other officers from different zones had switched over and they we
re coming too.

  Waylon sent the car leaping out of the woods onto the main road. It landed so hard, the undercarriage sent sparks flying across the asphalt. Waylon gunned it, racing toward the distant streetlights, miles ahead.

  Rein spun in his seat to look through the back window for any signs of activity inside the Krissing house. It was still dark. Rein sat back in his seat and said, “Slow down, Bill.”

  Bill had the wheel tight in both hands, perched forward in his seat like a diver at the starting block. The speedometer needle was bouncing over the 100-mph red line. “The road’s empty!”

  “You’re racing to the place we know the bad guy isn’t,” Rein said. “Think about it. Getting us there won’t find him.”

  A police car with blazing lights came ripping up the road behind them, driving so fast, they could see its lights blazing in their rearview mirror before they could hear the siren. It swerved around them, blowing past their car and leaving them rocking in its wake.

  Rein watched it vanish ahead of them. “If I’d just committed a crime, I’d park in an alley and wait until all the cops had clustered together at the scene, then roll out nice and slow so I didn’t attract any attention.”

  Waylon slowed down, running his hand through his damp hair. They crawled toward the scene, looking down every side street, searching for any parked station wagons. The traffic signals inside the borough had already been set to blinking yellow all around.

  Waylon twisted and turned to check all of the mirrors in his car and look through all of the windows for signs of anything outside that moved.