CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was half-four in the afternoon and the coffee tasted of metal and exhaustion. They’d spent the day hunting Cox in derelict churches; the smell of dust and pigeons clung to their clothes.
Now Kate sat behind the wheel of the Bureau-issued sedan, one hand loosely on the steering wheel, the other cupped around the paper cup for warmth.
Outside, the afternoon light had flattened to grey, the kind that made everything—cars, sidewalks, even faces—look slightly colourless.
Beside her, Marcus scrolled through the latest briefing on his phone, the screen light reflected in his tired eyes.
“Umpteen locations,” he said finally. “Umpteen dead ends.”
Kate gave a humourless laugh. “And one active meth lab. Thank you Kowalski.”
“Who’s Kowalski?”
“The sane one of the urban explorers Cox got pally with in prison,” she said. “That kid did us a favour. He might’ve been trespassing, but he’s got good instincts. If I can, I want to put in a good word for him.”
Marcus turned his head. “You think that’ll help?”
“I think it’ll give him a chance not to spend the rest of his life in a cell. He deserves that much. Only problem is, I wasn’t at the prison on official business.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow. “Somehow, you’ve got this way of making things complicated for yourself. Always.”
She shrugged. “It’s just how I roll, as my mom would put it.”
“Hm.”
Marcus studied her profile for a moment, then looked back out the window.
They were parked opposite a small bakery on a quiet street in Harlem, one of the few places within range that wasn’t crawling with uniforms or cameras.
The day had been long—too long—and the city, for once, felt like it was holding its breath.
“You sure you don’t want something sweet?” Marcus asked. “You’ve been running on caffeine and nerves since breakfast.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself.” He took a slow sip of his own drink. “You want to call your mom?”
Kate nodded. “Yeah. I should.”
She took out her phone, thumb hovering over the screen, before pressing dial. The call connected almost immediately.
“Kate, darling,” Catherine Valentine’s voice came, warm and calm as ever. “You sound tired.”
“I’m fine,” Kate said automatically. “Just checking in.”
“Tell me I’m not still grounded.”
“Sorry.” She tried to keep her tone light. “We’ve got to be certain there’s no threat. But try not to worry.”
“I never worry until I have to,” Catherine said, and Kate could hear the smile in her voice. “I’m perfectly safe here. The cops downstairs keep checking if I need anything. I said unless one of them’s qualified to teach a graduate seminar on discourse analysis, they’re not much use.”
Kate laughed softly. “I’ll send you Torres. She could probably manage it.”
“How’s Marcus?”
“Still alive,” Kate said, glancing at him.
Marcus gave a wave.
Catherine chuckled. “I’ll let you go, then. But promise me you’ll rest tonight. Both of you.”
“We’ll try.”
When Kate ended the call, she stared at the blank screen for a moment longer than necessary. Marcus noticed.
“She okay?”
“She’s… she’s Mom. If she was scared, there’s no way she’d let me see it. Probably grading essays while watching the news feed for updates about me.”
He smiled faintly. “Sounds like her.” He took a breath. “Earlier on today… it looked like you were having a tough call with her.”
She looked at him. “Yes. I was.”
"Okay. And is everything better now? You don't have to tell me."
"Well," she said. She told him about the conversation she'd had with her mother.
Her precocious awareness of the past tragedy and the long shadow it cast, right down to now.
Jeanette. There was more she wanted to say; so much more, about the journal, half-crazed, half-prescient.
But she left it where it was. She honestly doubted whether Marcus would believe her.
As it was, he listened and was quiet for a long time. And then, eventually, he said, "There's no corner, is there? No corner of your life that Cox doesn't want to get into and exploit. Not just your life. Even your Mom's. And that makes me sick. Really sick."
At that point, she felt something unlock inside.
He would believe her, because he always did.
Kate reached across and squeezed his arm, gratefully.
“It’s weird,” she said quietly. “All today, running around those dead sites, I kept thinking… Cox would want this. He’d want me burning hours, chasing shadows.
It’s exactly the kind of game he’d play. ”
Marcus didn’t answer immediately. “But so’s targeting your Mom,” he said, eventually. “And so is pretending to target your Mom. I was going to say he’s like the little boy who cried wolf, but Cox is the opposite. We have to take him seriously, every time, because sometimes, he really kills people.”
There was a tense silence.
“I don’t think he’ll hurt your Mom, though.”
Kate shrugged. “How can we know? And that’s the point.”
Silence settled again. The city outside was building towards rush hour. Somewhere nearby, a siren started up, climbed, and fell away.
Marcus broke the quiet. “I think you’ll be fine about the prison visit. I spoke to Winters.”
Kate looked at him in alarm. “You did?”
“I did. I argued that today’s events only demonstrated how central you are to catching Cox. I said it made no sense to exclude the person who knew the most about him.”
“What did she say?”
“She agreed. To be honest, I think she’d joined the dots already. When you messaged her about your mom, it was probably obvious that you had some ongoing involvement in the case.”
“But I disobeyed a direct order.”
“Reading between the lines, I think she knew it was dumb order, and she regretted it. I think Winter was obliged to get tough in front of Captain Big-Balls, and my interceding on your behalf gave her the perfect opportunity to switch positions.”
“Mister Inter-Departmental Politics.”
“I’ll take that as a thank-you.”
She looked at him. “Thank you. I mean it.”
“No problem. In return. Tell me. What were you doing?”
Kate didn’t move. “When?”
“When I called you about Kellermann, you said you’d been reading all week.”
She looked at him for a long time. “I did. I was.”
And she took a deep breath, and she told him all the rest. About Topju, the bullet.
The journal. It felt so good to say the words; what had felt deadly inside the walls of her skull became something else once spoken.
Not benign, but not quite so dreadful, not strong enough to drag her under. Marcus listened carefully.
"Two options," he said, after a long, thoughtful silence.
"One: Cox is the disciple and this Gadd-guy is the real master.
Unlikely, because sufficient quantities of experts have declared Gadd to be as crazy as a box of frogs.
Two: Cox somehow fed all that shit to Gadd, with the ultimate goal of you seeing it.
He knew in advance how he was going to stage each of the Commandment killings.
All the Bible references he'd use. Because he would, wouldn't he?
And then all he's got to do is get it all in front of you.
The diary, all the references to your life, your past. And then he's got you where he wants you.
Seeing all of that and starting to believe that these dark forces have somehow been shaping your life for years. "
“You don’t think that’s true?”
“Of course not, Kate. Do you?”
“No! I don’t know. I just don’t know, Marcus. But whoever’s behind it, they know how to get inside my head. To make me doubt my own sense of reality.”
Marcus leaned back, studying her. “Exactly. And that’s the motive. Not to kill you. To unmake you. Piece by piece. I can see it, Kate. I can see it for the simple reason that I’m not you.”
“But why me? Why the hell did it have to be me?”
Marcus sighed. “That, I don’t know. But you could also ask the question: why not you? Maybe it’s just random. It just happened to be you. I know that’s not very comforting, but…”
“I don’t know. Maybe it is kind of comforting to think that. I mean, it is and it isn’t.”
“If I was you, the first thing I’d have done is look up this Topju guy. He’s the one who brought you the package. I mean, you done that already, right?”
Kate was silent, feeling her stomach flip. Why hadn’t she? She’d been so alarmed by the parallels, with being handed a journal that seemed to predict the details of a series of nightmare cases in which she’d become intimately involved… That she’d forgotten to do the most basic checks.
Marcus was already on it. He held his phone out to her.
“This the guy?”
She looked at the photo. Her stomach gave another flip.
“No.”
The page in question was an obituary for a Portland detective who’d died two years ago. Her father’s case was mentioned. Topju had been a real person, his story, in some places, true. But she couldn’t have met him outside that diner.
Marcus took the phone away, started typing.
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll see.”
Her head span. She hadn’t met a ghost, she knew that.
Marcus held the phone for her to see the entry for the Department of Corrections website. Gadd was real. The numerous short sentences. The long one, for kidnap and sexual assault. The transfer to a psych facility in Vermont. Her heart was banging.
“Don’t you see what’s happened?”
“What? What has happened?”
“Kate, Cox played you. He sent some guy, one of his minions, with some story that was one part truth to three parts bullshit. That diary, journal, whatever you want to call it. It’s a fake.
Cox knocked it up to convince you that this was all predicted, prophesied, by the man who killed your father, as another way of convincing you that it’s all been about you from the get-go. ”
“But—”
"Okay, so you told me, that diary contained all the references and quotes that have featured in all the killings so far, right?"
“Right.”
“So if it was, genuinely, some spooky book of prophecy, wouldn’t it go beyond that? There are Ten Commandments, right? So why aren’t there Bible quotes for all the killings that are yet to happen?”
“Because—”
“Because it’s just his latest little trick! Who knows, maybe he only pulled it out of the hat because it looked like you were going to be taken off the case, and that the one thing he can’t allow to happen.”
“He wouldn’t have had the time.”
“How do you know? Maybe it was a work in progress and he decided to play it now. Emphasis on the word ‘play’. He’s messing with your mind, like he always does. And just think about the details, Vee! How can anyone hide a freakin’ journal in a Federal cell? This ain’t Papillon!”
Kate let everything settle. She remembered Gabe in the diner. The tragedy is that he’s made you believe you’re special to him — that you’re the main character in his story
Kate let out a long trembling breath. Then she looked out the windshield, her reflection faint in the glass, running through her heart an awkward cocktail of relief, gratitude and, still, of course, lingering doubt.
Seeming to understand that, Marcus also stayed quiet for a long while. Then, eventually, he said, “So what’s the plan now, partner?”
“Same as always,” she said quietly. “Follow the trail. Stay one step behind until I can get ahead.”
“I hate that plan.”
“I know.”
He looked at her, and for a heartbeat, the silence between them felt almost gentle. Then his phone buzzed. He answered, listened, and straightened. “Torres.”
Kate tensed. “What’s she got?”
Marcus’s expression darkened. “Someone just tipped her team off, but they’re going off-shift. Cops raided an empty church on 135th, found nothing. Then a guy nearby said he’d seen some unusual comings and goings from another one. St. Simon and St. Jude. On 138th.”
Kate froze. The name hit like a jolt of cold water. “Say that again.”
“St. Simon and St. Jude.”
Her mouth went dry. “That was name of the church in Portland. Where my father was killed.”
For a heartbeat, neither moved.
“Here we go again,” Kate said. “Start the car.”
Marcus wasn’t arguing now. He tossed his cup into the footwell, started the engine, and pulled out into the thickening traffic. The wipers beat once across the glass as the first drops of rain began to fall.
Kate stared straight ahead, pulse quickening, the city blurring into streaks of light.
The name echoed in her head like a prayer—or a curse.
St. Simon and St. Jude.
Full circle.