Page 24 of Go Home (Kate Valentine #1)

She pulled up and watched, as its driver did the same to her, on the opposite side of the street. She noted down the license. This was bizarre. Like that Spielberg film. Duel . She called Marcus – no reply. She stepped out of her car, ID in hand. The SUV roared away.

What even was that? Her paranoia? Two people paranoid about each other, a motorists’ folie à deux ?

Her phone rang. Marcus.

“What’s up?” he asked. His voice sounded thick; he was probably eating his fifth breakfast.

“Are you back?”

“Uh-huh.”

“With Mercer?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can you look up a vehicle number for me?”

“Sure.” She told him the number. It seemed to take him a very long time to write it down.

“Has something happened?” he asked.

“Nothing’s happened. Someone driving dangerously. I’m not sure they should be behind the wheel.”

She hung up. She almost never lied, and she was slightly appalled at how easy she’d found it. But she knew Marcus. If she even intimated that she might have been followed, he’d go to Defcon Four. And she wasn’t even sure if it had happened.

But if it had, then who was it?

+ + + +

When Kate reached HQ, she saw almost immediately what made it difficult for Marcus to write: two fingers on his right hand were bound together, on a splint. His right ear was also thickly bandaged.

“What happened?”

“I approached Mercer at his workplace. He attacked me before trying to flee the scene. Bent my fingers back and bit a piece out of my ear. I did something to my knee, too, when I gave pursuit.”

“Marcus, no! I’m so sorry.”

“I should have gone with backup. Why did you let me go without backup?”

Bigger and stronger than he thought, Kate noted. Like the story.

“The good news is, they’ve reattached the bit of ear. And he’s in the cells.”

“Cooperating?”

“He says God filled him with the strength to do it. I said – great, God can look after you in Gen Pop, too.”

Marcus was wisecracking as usual, but it was obvious that he was in pain. And by the sounds of it, things were going to get worse.

“We’re supposed to be doing pre-wedding candid shots this weekend. For the invitations. I promised Cheryl I wouldn’t get messed up. Now I’m going to look like I did ten rounds with Tyson.”

“Tell her it was my fault.”

He laughed and then winced. “No way. She already hates you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re a girl. She’s seen your picture.”

“This is ridiculous. Marcus, are you joking? I can’t come to your wedding now. You shouldn’t have told me that.”

“Oh no. You’re coming , Vee. If you don’t come, that’ll look extra-sus. To Cheryl, I mean.”

“Let’s just stick to something safe,” she said with a sigh. “Like the serial killer. Have you interviewed him?”

“I waited for you.”

He rubbed his top lip, which was a classic Marcus-tell. She wondered what was coming.

“Actually, the doc signed me off for the next twenty-four hours, but I said I couldn’t let you down.”

“Go.”

“I’m gonna need to approach Cheryl carefully on this one. I could just do with a few hours.”

“Go.”

“I’ll buy you dinner at Samarkand.”

“You already owe me two dinners at Samarkand. Go.”

She was heading down the corridor towards the interview suite when Winters opened her office door.

“Kate. In light of Marcus’s injuries, you’re going to need some backup. I’ll handle the press briefing while you press on with the interview and the rest. What can we give them?”

“That we’ve got a suspect in custody.” She remembered her earlier conversation with Gabe. “He’s calling himself the Lawgiver.”

“Wait – the suspect is?”

“I’ve yet to ascertain whether the suspect and the person who’s been messaging me are one and the same. But among the messages I’ve received is his request to be called Lawgiver.”

“I don’t like it. I’ve never liked the whole business of giving them names in the first place. It turns them into a kind of media commodity; it divorces people from the reality of what these monsters do, and from the hard work we put in, trying to catch them.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, ma’am, but I think this could be one valuable exception. Can I explain?”

Winters rubbed her eyes. “You’ve got two minutes before I have to go on a conference call with Director Gladesmuir.”

“I discussed the matter with Gabe Levine. He thinks the killer is expecting us to stand firm on the matter, ignore his request. If we subvert his expectations, it could bring about a significant shift in the power dynamic. If he perceives us as dancing to his tune, he may get over-confident, make a slip. And at the end of the day, we risk very little by giving it a try.”

Winters gave her a long, unblinking look. “I hardly need to remind you that Gabe Levine hasn’t worked for the FBI for the past three decades.”

“So, if I’d presented it to you as my idea…”

Winters and Levine had some kind of beef stretching back years. Kate kicked herself for even mentioning Gabe’s name.

“Don’t get cute, Agent Valentine.” Winters let out a long, weary sigh. “I’m sorry, I’m not prepared to risk it.”

Kate was actually surprised by that answer. In her experience, Winters usually sighed before she okayed something. As if you’d worn down her resistance.

“It’s got nothing to do with you. Or Gabe Levine,” she added pointedly. “I just can’t go against decades of Bureau policy. No, I’ll put it another way. I aren’t, frankly, the way things are. Sorry.”

“I understand, ma’am.”

But she didn’t. Afterwards, Kate thought she’d never seen Winters looking and sounding quite so tired.

She could only assume that she was under a lot of pressure from above.

She thought again of the King of Tarshish.

The Bureau was a similar affair – a tiny part of a beast much bigger and more complex.

You thought your boss was mad at you for consulting outside help.

In reality, your boss was mad because… who knows?

“The way things are,” apparently. Budgets, targets, internecine politics, wheels within wheels.

Kate could only guess. And be grateful she wasn’t a boss.

Was that what the killer was saying? That this whole thing was way, way bigger than she thought it was? But how so? More victims. Victims already dead but not yet found, or not yet identified as victims? Or victims to come?

There was something of the fox about Mercer: the sharp features, the bushy red hair, the way his eyes glittered under the harsh light of the interview suite.

His clothes were frayed and shabby, but his fingernails were clean and he smelled of soap.

And above all else, the guy was wired; Kate couldn’t tell if it was drugs or sheer adrenaline.

He fidgeted in his seat, rubbed imaginary patches of dirt on the table and on his jeans.

His gaze flickered over everything: her face, up to the strip lights, down to the floor tiles.

“Why did you attack my colleague?”

“I was going to comply. I didn’t need him pushing me about and shouting. A little Hitler.”

“I read your blog. You talk a lot about Hitler, don’t you? Historical figures and events as manifestations of God’s will, is that right?”

“What else would they be?”

“Random. Long chains of cause and effect. The coming together of multiple factors.”

“The arrogance of the Unbeliever!” He leaned across the table, so close she could tell exactly what soap he used.

“You would substitute the most complex and improbable arguments rather than accept the simplest. For example, while being totally unable to explain how, you argue that on a given day, at a given time, there was nothing, and from that nothing, a collision of gases causes a pinhead-sized fragment of something to appear, and the universe came to be. And you would place your trust in that least improbable of arguments – something from nothing - rather than accept the far simpler one of the universe being the work of a highly intelligent Creator.” He leaned back, folding his arms. “The arrogance of it. The sheer dumb-witted arrogance.”

“You accused Father Thomas and Professor Whitman of being arrogant. You said they deserved to die.”

“And?”

“So I’m curious to know – were you the agent of God’s will? Did He use you to exact revenge?”

“I’m a prophet,” Mercer replied. “Like Isaiah. One of His seraphim visited me in a dream and placed a burning coal on my lips. He said all the lies and sin have gone from you, and now you will only speak God’s truth.”

One of the first messages she’d received was a quote from Isaiah, describing exactly that: the birth of his prophetic powers, thanks to a burning coal.

“So, fire purifies. Is that why you start fires?”

“I set men’s souls ablaze with the fire of truth. And fire illuminates – it is a beacon in the darkness of ignorance and folly.”

She’d guessed he might not own up straight away. She changed direction. “Why did you quit Brantley after a year?”

“The Lord told me to,” he said, simply. “Like many of the prophets, I abandoned one life for another.”

“You sure about that?” She flipped open the folder containing what little information they’d gathered on Mercer thus far. “It looks to me like your grades went sideways halfway through the second semester. What happened?”

He gave a minute shake of the head – somewhere he didn’t want to go.

She wondered if there was another story hidden here.

Failing grades, declining mental health.

Young men in particular seemed to develop psychotic tendencies in the eighteen to twenty-two age bracket.

Mercer didn’t look much older than twenty-two himself.

“How do you support yourself?” Kate asked. “I don’t imagine God pays your rent.”

“I deliver pizzas,” he said stonily. “My blog followers make donations.”

“It looks like a hard life,” Kate said. “When did you last buy new clothes?”

“I’m not interested in the things of this world,” he replied. “Only in God’s word.”