CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The weather had turned cold, but the diner never changed.
Same Formica booths, same faded Coke ads curling above the counter, same waitress with the same varnished smile, seeming to exist outside of time. The smell was still a cocktail of burnt coffee and grease seasoned by decades of repetition.
Kate sat by the window, nursing an untouched cup. Outside, sleet feathered the glass. A bus hissed past. The world, she thought, looked perpetually grey in this part of Manhattan.
When Gabe Levine came in, he was carrying the cold with him — an academic sort of cold, precise and slightly detached.
He wore a corduroy suit, fire-truck red, with a paisley patterned waistcoat.
People stared, even here in New York, where it was said you could lead a herd of elephants down to the subway, and no-one would look up.
They looked up for Gabe, and Gabe just beamed right back at them as if their gaze was his birthright.
“Kate,” he said, sliding into the seat opposite her. “You look like someone who’s had a week.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
She gave him the short version — the things she could tell him without breaking half a dozen Bureau protocols.
Her mother back at the State University, classes resumed, the protective detail stood down.
No Monday attack, no new threats. Tommy Rodrigues still in what she called “custodial limbo” at the Fifteenth, dribbling out half-memories like confessions.
He’d managed to remember a few more of the names he’d passed to Cox, but insisted there were others, hovering just beyond reach. His memory, he said, wasn’t too good.
A handful of bankers and financiers had been warned of “credible threats to life.” Three had fled the city, one had hired a private security team, another insisted the whole thing was media hysteria.
The Bureau, Kate told Gabe, was quietly praying that by Friday the operation — the big one — would bring everything to a close.
She didn’t elaborate. But the flicker in her eyes told Gabe there was something she wasn’t saying.
“So,” he said softly, “you’re using him. Tommy Rodrigues.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. The word bait is practically written on your forehead.”
She smiled without humour. “I can’t confirm or deny that.”
They let the waitress pour them both fresh coffee. Kate stirred hers absently, watching the surface tremble.
“You read the email,” she said finally. “About Green Gables. About my father. About the journal.”
“I did,” Gabe said. “And I’ve been thinking about it ever since.”
“Then maybe you can tell me what he’s doing.”
“Cox?”
She nodded. “It’s as if he’s… following me.
Not just physically, but theologically. He takes fragments from my life and turns them into parables.
He’s shaping me — I mean, I know now that he’s trying to make me believe he’s shaping me.
But is there a precedent for that? Any theological basis for someone following another person’s life like a map? ”
Gabe leaned back, fingers drumming lightly on the tabletop. “You’re describing something close to the Suffering Servant.”
“From the Bible?”
“Isaiah, chapter fifty-three.” His tone grew more professorial.
“It’s one of the most argued-over passages in all of Scripture.
Christians read it as prophecy — a foretelling of Christ’s suffering and death.
He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.
The idea is that through one man’s pain, the world is redeemed. ”
“And the Jewish interpretation?”
“To the Jews, the Suffering Servant isn’t an individual, but Israel Herself — a people chosen to endure, to be invaded, scattered, persecuted, yet still a light unto the nations. Their suffering reveals God’s purpose to the world.”
Kate turned that over slowly. “So in both cases, the suffering’s supposed to serve someone else. Either it redeems humanity, or it enlightens it.”
“Exactly.”
“And you think that’s what Cox believes he’s doing?”
Gabe hesitated. “Possibly. But there’s another layer.
A much older one.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice.
“Long before Christianity — even before the Hebrew prophets — there were rites that prefigured the scapegoat. You know the Levitical idea? One goat sacrificed to God, the other sent into the wilderness carrying the sins of the people?”
She nodded.
“In some Mediterranean and North African traditions, the goat wasn’t a goat at all.
It was a man. Usually one who’d committed some offence — a thief, a blasphemer, a drunk.
In Corsica and Sardinia, it would typically be a murderer, someone who’d taken life in a vendetta.
Later on, it was fused with Christian traditions, so for example, the community would choose their scapegoat at the start of Holy Week.
And on Good Friday, he'd be paraded through the streets, mocked, cursed, pelted with stones.
Then they'd drag him to the sea, dunk him in the waves, and when he came out, the whole town was cleansed. All its sins washed away.”
Kate listened, expression unreadable. “So the man suffers so everyone else can start fresh.”
“Exactly. And he survives, usually. The humiliation is the sacrifice. The cleansing comes through his degradation.”
She sipped her coffee, the taste suddenly metallic. “So what — Cox thinks my pain absolves him? That by making me suffer, he’s scrubbing his own soul clean?”
Gabe shrugged gently. “His, or someone’s… or a whole community. It’s one interpretation.”
“It’s insane.”
“Yes,” he said simply. “But it’s also consistent.
To someone like Cox, theology isn’t faith — it’s a system of control.
He doesn’t believe in redemption; he believes in design.
Your suffering gives order to his world.
I think that’s a big thing with him. Order, routine.
I wouldn’t mind betting he ended up in a boys’ home or the military…
even both. Somewhere where the structure was everything. ”
Kate stared out of the window, watching the sleet thicken into snow. “Wouldn’t it just be easier not to murder people?”
“That presumes he wants ease,” Gabe said. “Cox wants meaning. Men like him are addicted to it. If there’s no meaning, they’ll manufacture one.”
She turned back to him. “Why did I have to be his meaning?”
“Why not you?”
“That’s what Marcus said. And it’s not very comforting.”
Gabe nodded slowly. “I can see that. But surely it’s more comforting than thinking he’s really got some power over you. Now you know what he’s doing, you have the power.”
The waitress arrived with the check. Gabe paid, despite her protest. They stood to leave.
Outside, the sleet had turned to heavy snow, whitening the street in seconds. Gabe buttoned his coat. “You’ll catch him, Kate. I can see that much.”
She looked up at him, the snow settling in her hair. “You believe in prophecy now?”
He smiled. “No. Just character.”
They parted at the corner — Gabe turning north, Kate south toward the precinct. The snow muffled the city into silence.