Countdown - Iris Johansen [77]
“Is he . . . insane?”
“No more than any one of us would be if we’d gone through what he has. He blocks things out; at moments he goes back to the simplicity of childhood. But he’s getting better every day.”
“What things does he try to block out?”
MacDuff didn’t answer for a moment. “I know he’s killed at least twenty-two people. Probably a good many more. That’s all he’ll allow himself to remember.”
“My God.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” MacDuff said harshly. “If you could have known him as a boy, you’d realize that. He was wild as a hare but there was no one with a kinder heart or a sweeter nature. It was that son of a bitch Reilly.”
“He can’t be more than nineteen,” she whispered.
“Twenty.”
“How . . . ?”
“I told you, he was wild. He ran away from home when he was fifteen to knock about the world. I don’t know when or where he ran across Reilly. All I know is that not long ago his mother came to me and asked me to go get her son. He was in an asylum in Denver, Colorado. The police had picked him up wandering on a highway near Boulder. No papers. And they couldn’t get him to tell them anything. He was in the asylum for two weeks before he spoke one word. Then it was to ask for pen and paper to write to his mother.” He paused. “It was a good-bye letter. She was hysterical when she came to me and asked me to go get him. She thought he was going to commit suicide.”
“Why didn’t she go to him herself?”
“I’m the laird. They’re used to coming to me in emergencies.”
“Then why didn’t she come to you when he ran away?”
“I wasn’t in the country. I was in Naples trying to find enough money to bail out the Run.” His lips thinned. “I should have been here. I was almost too late. When I got to the hospital, he’d already gotten hold of a razor and cut his wrists. They barely managed to save him.”
“What did you do?”
“What did you think I did? He was one of mine. I rented a chalet in the mountains and took him out of that hospital and stayed with him for the next month. I held him while he raved and ranted and wept. I talked to him and made him talk to me.”
“Did he tell you what happened to him?”
He shook his head. “Only bits and pieces. Reilly was very clear in Jock’s mind, but he couldn’t decide whether Reilly was Satan or God. Whatever entity he was to Jock, he dominated and punished. And controlled. Oh, yes, he definitely controlled.”
“Brainwashing? Like Trevor told me he did with those GIs?”
“Evidently he was doing in-depth experimentation this time. How do you make an assassin of a good-hearted lad like Jock? Drugs? Sleep deprivation? Torture? Give him hallucinations? Prey on his mind and emotions? Or combine them all into one package? He was trained in all forms of murder and then sent out to do Reilly’s bidding. It must have been difficult to keep control of Jock over an extended killing spree like that. Reilly was very clever.”
“And a monster.”
“Without doubt. And monsters don’t deserve to walk this earth. And he won’t for much longer. I made a deal with Trevor. I get Reilly. I don’t care about anything else.”
Jane thought of something. “Why Jock? It’s too great a coincidence that he’d just pick him out of the blue.”
“No coincidence. I’ve made it no secret that I’ve been looking for Cira’s gold. That story on the Internet drew me the way it drew everyone else. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The answer to my prayers. I’ve made five trips to Herculaneum in the past three years and it must have gotten back to Reilly. Trevor says he’s been keeping an eagle eye on everything and everyone who looked like he might have a chance at finding the gold before he does. He’s obsessed with those gold coins, and he probably wanted to find out if I’d learned anything important. Jock was in and out of the castle all the time before he decided to go off and see the world. Who better to ask?” His lips tightened bitterly. “He probably tracked him down to ask him a few crucial questions and then decided to make use of him in other ways when Jock