Robert Walker - Cutting edge

Bryce nodded and started away, mumbling. “Good… good… good…”

Phil Lawrence grinned over the bodies. “Don't worry, Lucas,” he said, “we'll clean this bloody church out for good and all. And we won't overlook Aguilar's computer logs.”

I'm sure you won't, Lucas thought, still wondering just how deep into the mire Phil Lawrence was. He didn't believe in miraculous coincidence, not in fiction and not in the real world, especially.

“If you're finished with the questions, Captain,” offered Lucas. “I think Dr. Sanger ought to be sent home.”

Meredyth looked into Lucas's shimmering brown eyes and was pleased that he was thinking of her comfort.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Lawrence replied. “The both of you had best get some rest, and Lucas, you'd best get to the hospital. Go along with the paramedics; allow that shoulder to heal properly.”

One of the paramedics, hearing this, added, “The doctors are going to want to open up the wound, remove the bone fragments. We saw some damage,” he finished.

“I'm all right,” Lucas stubbornly countered.

“Do as the captain says, you mule-headed fool,” Meredyth almost shouted. “And you stop worrying about me. I'm fine.”

“You'll likely be inundated with press tomorrow,” warned Lawrence, “so be prepared, the both of you.”

Lucas nodded, wishing he could get up and guide Meredyth away from all this horror, but as his eyes turned, he saw that this little chore was being taken care of by the dark-haired, blue-eyed Conrad McThuen. Lucas suddenly felt a failure, a clumsy football player, unintentionally fumbling and passing Meredyth off to the other man, who enveloped her in his arms and led her to his waiting car. As had happened so many times before, Lucas felt a fool for even giving the notion a thought. She was, after all, out of his reach.

“You okay, Lucas?” asked a concerned Randy Oglesby. “Damn, but that was close.”

The case against Father Frank Aguilar was strong. Bones from Mootry, Little, Palmer, and the more recently deceased couple in South Dakota were all found in various incinerators around the monastery. One of the hooded four killed alongside Aguilar was a woman, and endless, tireless questioning and probing and threatening began to show that Aguilar and a small contingent of his most trusted followers had acted alone. The Mad Priest of the Church of the Sacred Sepulcher, as the press was now calling Aguilar, had also kept a room filled with ancient weaponry, a collection of weapons with a bloody history, including several crossbows. Of course the five dead, robed bodies in the alley that night had all had crossbows of modem design on them. Further damning information was unearthed on the Mad Priest's computer in the form of a diary detailing his actions and rambling on about a world that resembled and refracted the computer game, Helsinger's Pit. His diary entries named his coconspirators, Brother Lyle, Brother James, Brother Aaron, and Sister Inez. A fifth assassin was also found, a Brother Paul Timmons, who matched the dead man found in South Dakota, stuffed in the trunk of a rental car. All the other brothers were in various stages of indoctrination.

The motives expressed in Aguilar's diary pendulumed between madness and monetary gain. He claimed those selected to die were enemies of his church, vampires who conspired against him. He was obviously a religious fanatic. He described Whitaker, Palmer, Mootry and the others all as various aspects of the anti-Christ, men who worshipped the pleasures of the flesh, wealth, self-aggrandizement, and ultimately Satan. The only way to stop them from reforming and returning to this realm was to behead them, cut off their extremities and genitals and bum the parts, after staking them through the heart by the most modern and efficient method they could find, the crossbow.

Randy Oglesby had been prophetically correct. The cult members had taken as their model of destruction the computer game Helsinger's Pit, and they'd been led to believe, thanks in great part to the FBI Vampire List, that their victims lived lives of extraordinary, supernatural powers from the dark side; by the same token, the vampire stalkers weren't above partaking in a devil's plunder, amassing as much funds as possible from the so-called anti-Christ before dispatching him again and again.

Father Aguilar's diary entries to this end clearly marked him and his followers as religious maniacs. Furthermore, it turned out that there were numerous women among the “brothers” of the Sepulcher, and many of these women were pregnant with Aguilar's offspring.

The good father was simply doing his part to cleanse the earth of the filth and vermin that had proliferated over generations, and he wasn't above taking the ill-gotten demonic wealth in the bargain, to put the ill-gotten money to a pure and holy use. He was also amassing an army of followers who would willingly assassinate the anti-Christ in his name.

From Aguilar's diary came the truth about the assassinations of John Covey behind bars and the Shirleys in South Dakota, who'd been pawns in Aguilar's distorted, aberrant game of who lives and who dies for the greater glory of his fringe religion. He had indeed selected the Shirleys at random, calling them martyrs to his cause.

The Houston Star and Chronicle ate up the sensational story, and every newscast was full of the sordid details. The Order of the Sacred Sepulcher and its cathedral church, monastery, and soup kitchen were closed, the members, some of whom remained behind bars for further questioning and disposition, disbanded, but not without an outcry from civil rights organizations and the NRA, who likened the situation to Waco and Koresh.

Phil Lawrence came to see Lucas in the bowels of the precinct, in the Cold Room, where he'd continued to report since the mass arrests had been made. He had been involved in the interrogation of prisoners; few men in the precinct hadn't interrogated one or more of Father Aguilar's followers. However, the precinct house was slowly coming back around to a semblance of normalcy, and Lucas had been given his orders by Sergeant Kelton that he was to return to the damp little hole where the dead files awaited his attention. Meanwhile, in the newspapers, he and Sanger were being touted as heroes in this hero less story.

He felt like the successful artist whose work was being admired by people walking through the Guggenheim Museum in New York City while the artist stood in the unemployment line, filling out a form that might allow him a subsistence living. He questioned the neat little package, too, of how Father Aguilar masterminded the series of killings, and how the widespread murders, crossing so many boundaries and state lines, could be carried out by Aguilar's monastic brothers alone. What troubled him most was how easily it had all fallen into place after he and Meredyth had stepped into Frank Aguilar's domain-like a house of cards, like someone had pulled out the one card holding everything together, but that card remained elusive, unreturned.

That was the glum mood three days after his release from the hospital, his arm still in a sling, when Captain Phillip Lawrence joined Lucas in the Cold Room. Lucas offered his captain a seat, wary of the other man.

Lawrence began by asking him how he was doing, how he was adjusting after all the excitement, and how his wounded shoulder was healing. Lucas punched himself in the shoulder harness, saying, “It's a piece of cake, compared to what I've grown accustomed to.”

Lawrence laughed lightly. “I'll give you that much, Stonecoat. You're as tough as your name. I'm glad to have you on my team. Wish I had a squad of men as good as you.”

“What's all this leading up to, sir?”

“Well, no easy way to say this, Lucas.”