Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [140]
“Stop it!” Lee cried out as loudly as he could to the figure bending over her. “Leave her alone!”
The man looked up, and Lee saw the face of his mentor and surrogate father, John Paul Nelson.
Nelson smiled up at him. “Nice touch, the robes, don’t you think? I found them hanging in the vestibule.”
Lee looked down at his mentor through bleary eyes. “Please, don’t. I—I understand you.”
“Oh, please! No one ‘understands’ me!”
“No, you’re wrong—I do, I swear it.”
“Nice try, Lee.” Nelson’s voice was harsh, the vowels twisted into diphthongs, consonants sharp as the prongs of a garden rake.
Lee pulled on the ropes binding him, trying to wrest free.
“Why did you have to ignore me?” Nelson said. “I begged you—begged you—not to take on this case! I tried to protect you. Even all that rubbish about your sister—that was to throw you off—but you just had to persist, didn’t you? My God, I never wanted it to come to this!”
Lee craned his neck to peer at Kathy, trying to see if she was still breathing.
“Oh, she’s still alive,” Nelson said. “I don’t kill them all at once, you know…press and release, press and release. You’d be surprised how long you can keep someone alive throughout slow strangulation. But then you know that, don’t you? You know a lot of things about me—except the things that count.”
“Why? Why did you do it?”
“Well, my dear old dad was a member of the Westies, after all. You could say violence runs in our family. If you’d bothered to actually profile me, you’d see I have a tidy little history of violent behavior. I’m just very good at hiding it.”
“But the women…why…?”
“Oh, come on, Lee! Haven’t you ever wondered what it felt like? Not just to study them from a distance—but to actually be a killer?”
Nelson’s face was eager, his eyes shining in a way Lee had never seen before.
“Why did you have to kill Eddie?”
Nelson snorted. “That’s obvious, isn’t it? He was getting too close.” He sighed. “I sent you so many warnings, and you ignored them all.”
Lee groaned and struggled to free himself, but the ropes binding him were firmly tied.
Nelson watched him. “You know, I never imagined that sailing class at summer camp would be quite so useful,” he said. “It just goes to show that you never know what’s going to come in handy. I learned quite a few nifty knots. Of course, you have to have a mind for it. Fortunately, I do have a knack—for knots, puzzles, mazes of all sorts.”
He looked up at Lee with an expression of mock sympathy. “I thought you were a puzzle solver yourself, but you seem to have come up a bit short this time, I’m afraid.”
Lee tried again to wrench himself free, but the ropes only cut more deeply into his flesh. His head was pounding, and his whole body ached.
“Save your strength,” Nelson said. “There’s no point in wearing yourself out.”
A drop of sweat from Lee’s forehead fell on Kathy’s face, and her eyelids fluttered.
“Come to think of it, what’s a Christ figure without a little stigmata?” Nelson said, and seized the ornate Greek cross on its long pole. He raked the sharp edges savagely across Lee’s ribs, slashing a wound in his right side. Lee couldn’t help crying out in pain.
“There, that’s better,” Nelson said. “More like the real Christ on the cross.”
Lee groaned and fought to remain conscious.
“Does that hurt?” Nelson snarled. “I didn’t invite you here, you know.”
“Just—let—her—go,” Lee pleaded, the words forcing themselves from his throat. “I won’t turn you in—I won’t tell anyone.”
Nelson snorted. “And if I believe that, I’ll bet you have a bridge in London for sale too.”
He crossed himself and kneeled at the altar.
“Bless this act of deliverance, oh Heavenly Father, as I deliver the soul of your servant into your care.”
He looked up at Lee, who was running out of strength, panting from the effort of trying to free himself.
“I don’t believe in God, of course, but I like saying the words all the same.”
Lee felt the blackness threatening to close in again.