Lee Child: Vengeance: Mystery Writers of America Presents

A detective intercepts them with a doubtful glance, hunched into the weather. He has a day’s tired stubble above his collar, and a tired suit beneath his overcoat.

“This him?”

One of the cops nods. “All yours.”

“Let’s go.” The detective steps back with a spread arm, an open invitation tinged with mocking — for what he is, for what he represents.

“Wallet was still in the vic’s hip pocket — how we knew he was one of yours,” the detective says as they walk toward the alley. “But we would have made him sooner or later.”

The detective waits for a response, for a simple curiosity that’s not forthcoming.

“I do what needs to be done.”

The detective shrugs. “Sure you do. For the sinners as much as the saints, huh?”

“That’s always been the way of it.”

“Sure.” The detective’s face bulges, bones pressing against his skin as if engorged. “This guy’s a convicted pederast. He fucks boys — kids. The younger the better. And he was a priest when they sent him down. A goddamn priest.”

“He’ll be judged.”

They reach the throat of the alley and the detective stops, as if to go farther will leave him open to contamination.

“Well, I’d say he’s had his earthly judgment.” And if the voice is ice, the eyes are fire. “All that’s left for him is the fucking divine.”

ADRIFT IN YOUR own circle of confusion, you catch only snatches of words you recognize but can no longer comprehend.

“… amazed he’s lasted this long …”

“… nothing more we can do …”

“… had it coming …”

And you’re colder than the sea, locked inside a faltering body and a breaking mind, locked into a tumult of regret and the terror of going to meet a vengeful Maker.

The medics rise, retreat, leaving the clutter of their futile effort strewn around you.

You want to cry for them not to leave you, not to let you die alone, but you lie muted by the blade, stilled by the approaching darkness. Darker than the alley, darker than the earth. The devil prowls the shadows, waiting without tolerance, watching with lascivious eyes. Soon he will engulf you, rip apart your body even as your last breath decays, and devour a soul already rotten.

Unless …

“… he’s here …”

Your eyes flutter closed.

Thank God.

It takes effort to open them again, to see the priest approaching. The medics have moved back a respectful distance, clustering with the detective at the mouth of the alley, superfluous. The priest bends over you.

You prepare yourself for Penance, Anointing, Viaticum. He’ll hear no spoken confession from your lips, but absolution assuming contrition surely must be granted.

You prepare yourself for a ritual worn with consoling familiarity. One you carried out often enough, back in a former life.

But as the priest bends low, you catch sight of his face, and this man’s face you do remember, from behind the blade all the way back to his boyhood.

He was a special boy, all right.

Your first temptation on the path of sin.

And now your last.

The fear writhes in you, but he touches your forehead with a gentle finger and when he speaks, his voice is gentle too.

“God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace …”

Impatient, your mind runs on ahead:

… and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

But the expectation is not fulfilled. The essential words do not follow.

Your eyes seek his, frantic, pleading. The devil growls at your shoulder, taking shape out of the umbra, exulting as he solidifies. Closer. You feel his talons pluck at your vision, begin to pull the fetid shroud across your eyes. You are sinking.

Quickly! Finish it!

The priest bends closer still, his voice a whisper in your closing ear.

“You found me, and I was lost. Now you are lost, because I found you …”

THE MOTHER

BY ALAFAIR BURKE

Diane Light closed the file folder and added it to the heap on her desk. At nearly a foot high, the pile began to wobble. She rested her forearm on top of the tower to hold it steady.

She resisted the urge to separate that last file from the rest. It was special. It deserved to be carried into court on its own.

“Jesus, I thought I was late.” Diane heard harried footsteps rush past her office door, her coworker’s generic voice fading as he moved farther down the hallway. “Stone’s a stickler about time, you know.”

She knew.

She stole a glance at her watch as she scooped the stack of files against her chest. Two minutes until Stone would be seated at his bench, tapping the face of his own watch, eager for the deputy district attorney to start calling cases.

Judge Stone was a stickler for promptness, but he was also a stickler for facts. She’d memorized the contents of Kiley’s file, from start to finish.

TWO HOURS IN, Stone finally commented on the time. “Nice job this morning, Miss Light. You could teach your colleagues a thing or two about docket management.”

Her previously foot-high pile was now down to two inches. Three more cases. Two more before Kiley’s. And still an hour to go before Stone’s hardwired lunch alarm would sound. The strategy was working.

She rushed through the next two cases. They were easy ones: Mothers complying with conditions. Social workers report progress and recommend continued monitoring and treatment. No request for immediate disposition, Your Honor.

Forty-five minutes to go, and only one more file. The file. Kiley’s file. She called the case number and watched Kiley’s father approach the opposition table with his court-appointed counsel. Kiley’s assigned guardian ad litem stood between the two lawyers.

“Your Honor, you may recall this case. The State originally moved to terminate parental rights ten months ago, after police learned the child had been sold sexually by her parents. She was only twenty-two months old at the time.” Twenty-two months sounded much younger than two years old. Somehow it sounded even more babylike than a year and a half.

“Objection.” It came from the dad’s attorney, Lisa Hobbins.

Hobbins pretended to care about her clients, but Diane knew for a fact that last Cinco de Mayo, after too many tequila shots at Veritable Quandary, Hobbins had puked her guts out in the gutter of First Avenue, crying about the scumbag parents she represents. “Miss Light is well aware that only the mother was convicted of those charges,” Hobbins said now. “My client was estranged from his wife at the time the crimes occurred. He wanted to get clean. She didn’t. He wouldn’t have left Kiley with his wife if he’d known —”

“We dispute all of that, Your Honor. A grand jury indicted the father as well after finding probable cause for his involvement. The defendant was acquitted at trial after his wife testified about her sole responsibility, but the State’s position is that his wife, a battered woman and not estranged from her husband at all, protected Mr. Chance —”

Judge Stone held up a hand to cut her off. “The State lost at trial, Miss Light. The jury must have rejected your theory.”

“But this is a separate case, Your Honor. As an independent finder of fact, you can make a fresh assessment —”