Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [141]
“You know, you should feel honored to witness her transformation,” Nelson said, his voice sarcastic. “That’s what he thought. Poor Samuel—what a nutcase. He thought he was saving them from sin—sending them to God. Poor deluded idiot.”
“Why did you do it?” Lee gasped.
“Why did I strangle nice Catholic girls who never did me any harm?”
Lee nodded weakly.
“You’d be surprised how easy it is. After a while, you develop a taste for killing—you actually get to like it. And the Biblical carving was a nice touch—my idea, of course, but Samuel took to it, and did a nice job of it, I thought, didn’t you?”
Nelson’s eyes were the eyes of a fanatic. He didn’t so much look at Lee as right through him. It was like being looked at by a sleepwalker. His calm was more terrifying than an outpouring of raw fury might have been.
“But—you?”
“Oh, don’t be so naïve, for God’s sake!”
“But why?”
Nelson’s face darkened with rage.
“Because they didn’t deserve to live and serve God after He took Karen away from me!”
“Oh my God,” said Lee. “It was Karen’s death—”
Nelson laughed—an ugly, grim sound, like a rock hitting water.
“Yes, that was my ‘precipitating stressor’—classic textbook case, eh? Except who would have thought the pursuer would become the pursued? Now, if that’s not irony, I don’t know what is!”
The pursuer becomes the pursued…. the phrase repeated itself in Lee’s foggy brain as Nelson leaned over Kathy’s motionless body, his red hair reflecting the single overhead altar light. There was a tiny bald spot on the top of his head, the scalp pink and bare, and Lee was reminded of the tiny pink feet of a litter of newborn mice he had seen as a boy. The color had struck him at the time as sickly, and now, as he tried to keep from passing out, the pink bald spot seemed to shift its shape and grow in size…. Can this be it, then? he thought. This is really what death is? He felt an odd peacefulness settle over him, as if he were watching the entire scene from very far away, through a thick layer of gauze.
“I’m sorry about her, I really am,” Nelson said. “Everyone will think that Samuel did it, of course. He did do some of them, you know—once I convinced him of the rightness of it.”
“You used him,” Lee said, pushing through the fog in his brain.
“I realized early on I needed a fall guy—a patsy, as they so colorfully call it in old movies. He was a good student, one of my best. Little did I know how good he’d turn out to be, actually,” he added, pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. “That was the only real gamble I took—but it worked out in the end.”
“Samuel’s dead,” Lee said. “You killed him.”
“I knew you’d track him down sooner or later.”
“Christ, you even smoked a cigarette while he died!”
“Ah, yes—the clove cigarettes. That is a rather distinctive odor, I suppose. But I couldn’t very well let him live, could I? Any more than I could let you live—or her, for that matter.”
Nelson leaned lower over Kathy. Lee saw the glint of metal, and saw the knife descend over her body.
With tremendous effort, Lee shook himself out of his stupor. He felt a roar well up in his throat, and gathered all his strength to rock his body forward. He felt a screw on the wall behind him give way, and he paused for breath, then gave one last desperate lunge forward. There was a crunching sound as the screws tore away from the masonry wall. The cross teetered for a moment, then thundered down over the altar. Nelson stood frozen, as if he didn’t believe what was happening, then tried to dodge out of the way—but it was too late. The heavy wooden cross came crashing down on him.
The last thing Lee was aware of before he lost consciousness was Nelson’s body folding underneath him like a puppet whose strings have suddenly been severed.
Chapter Sixty-five
Darkness…more darkness…hands lifting him up…flashing lights…people scurrying about everywhere…then he opened his eyes to see Chuck Morton’s face looking down at him. They were in the back of an ambulance. Lee was lying in a stretcher, his friend crouched over him.
“Kathy—” he began, but Chuck