The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [325]
“Couldn’t beat the odds, though,” I managed to mumble through my grief.
“There were no odds to beat,” Miss Howard answered. “The game was rigged against her. From the very start…”
I nodded, sniffling away as much sorrow as I could. “I know,” I said.
The Doctor, having seen the van out of sight, walked through the front yard to join us. “Life did not offer her many chances,” he said quietly, standing by us and looking out the open door. “But it was not life, finally, that took her last chance away. Left to her own devices, she might have escaped all that she’d known here, Stevie.” He put a hand to my head. “That knowledge must be foremost in your thoughts, in the days to come.”
Nodding again, I wiped at my face and tried to get myself pulled together; then a thought entered my head, one what’d been shoved aside by all the turmoil of Kat’s death. “What about Mr. Picton?” I asked. “Is he—?”
“Dead,” the Doctor answered, plainly but gently. “He died where we found him—the loss of blood was simply too great.”
I suddenly felt like the ground underneath me was just melting away. “Oh, God …” I moaned; then I slid down the wall to the floor, grabbing at my forehead with one hand and quietly crying again. “Why? What the hell is all this for…?”
The Doctor crouched down in front of me. “Stevie,” he said, his own eyes red around their black cores, “you grew up in a world where people robbed for money, killed for advantage or out of rage, assaulted to satisfy lust—a world where crime seemed to make some terrible sort of sense. And this woman’s actions seem very different to you. But they aren’t. It is all a result of perception. A man rapes because he sees no other way to satisfy an urgent, terrible need. Libby kills because she sees no other way to reach goals that are as vital to her as the very air she breathes, and were planted in her mind when she was too young to know what was taking place. She, like the rapist, is wrong, horrifically wrong, and it is our job—yours, mine, Sara’s, all of ours—to understand the perceptions that lead to such misbegotten actions, so that we may have some hope of keeping others from being enslaved by them.” Reaching out to touch my knee, the Doctor looked into my eyes with an expression what showed all the pain he’d felt when his beloved Mary Palmer had died just steps from where I was sitting. “You have lost someone you cared for deeply to those wretched perceptions, and to that enslavement. Can you now go on? We haven’t much time, and if you wish to stay out of what’s left to be done—”
He was cut off by a pair of sounds: a clap of thunder from the sky above, then the ringing of the telephone beyond the kitchen. I couldn’t and can’t say exactly why, but for some reason the pairing of those noises reminded me that El Niño was still out and at work, and that I still hadn’t heard anything from him. With that realization I stopped crying for the moment, and struggled to get to my feet.
“I’d better answer that,” I said, starting back toward the kitchen. “It might be El Niño—I left him to watch over the Dusters’ place.”
“Stevie.” I stopped and turned to see the Doctor still studying me, sympathetically, but with real purpose. “If you cannot go on, no one will blame you. But if you choose to go on, then remember what our work is.”
I just nodded, then headed into and past the kitchen, picking up the receiver of the ‘phone and pulling the mouthpiece down. “Yeah?” I said.
“Señorito Stevie.” It was El Niño, all right, his voice still very businesslike and determined. “Do you have news of your friend?”
I sighed once, trying to hold back more tears. “The woman got to her,” I said. “She’s dead. Mr. Picton, too.” El Niño muttered something softly in a language what I couldn’t place: neither English nor Spanish, I figured it for the native tongue of his people. “So,” he went on, after a moment’s pause. “The need for justice has grown. I am sorry for that, Señorito Stevie.”
“Where are you?”
I asked.
“In the stables across from the house of the woman. She has returned