CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Elijah Cox missed being a priest. He’d forgotten how fulfilling it was to guide people to repentance, to coax them into confronting the filth in their soul.
There was nothing more fulfilling than to see tears form in the eyes of lost sheep finally realizing how stained they were, hearing their grief as they realized they’d wronged the God who created them, tasting their anguish as they begged for the strength to return to their Shepherd, to go forth and sin no more.
Almost nothing so fulfilling.
A tremor ran through him, and he smiled as he recalled the feeling of Warren Schulz’s heartbeat weakening, the blood slowing in the veins underneath Cox’s fingers.
Feeling the life drain away from the heretic, the one who not only disobeyed God’s commandments but rejected them: that was by far the most joyous feeling in Elijah’s life.
He winced as he fitted the contact lenses to his eyes.
Many people had pointed to his eyes as his most distinguishing feature, and since the FBI had chosen to warn people about the Lawgiver rather than warn them against their sin, he needed this disguise.
The work wasn’t complete. Almost but not quite.
Until it was, he would conceal his true appearance.
He looked at the stain on his hairline and frowned. He might have Ian procure him a wig rather than continue to dye his hair.
Ian wasn’t here right now. He was at the church, preparing for the final confrontation, ensuring the sanctuary was ready for Cox when he met Kate there and performed the most important sacrifice.
Kate was having a lot of trouble with this one. He would need to make sure the next sinners he corrected pointed more obviously to the site of her sacrifice.
To be fair to her, he had made this cipher harder than the others. He was weakened from his incarceration. He needed time to heal.
He was healed now. Healed enough that he could complete his task.
He moaned again, imagining Kate’s throat under his fingers, Kate’s heart slowing under his command. Kate yielding her soul to God, making the sacrifice needed to deliver the world from evil.
He pictured her smooth skin straining under her fingers, her chest swelling as she struggled for breath, her hips bucking, the wideness of her eyes. She would be angry at first, then afraid, then, at the end, she would accept.
He shuddered, then gasped and stepped back. His own heart thudded in his chest. He swallowed and ran his hands through his hair, pulling them away to reveal more dots of black where the dye had run.
Focus. This isn’t about you. This is about God.
He patted away the stains on his hairline, washed his hands, then left the hotel.
Ian had secured him a less noticeable vehicle, a late-model Toyota Crown, not luxurious enough to be considered opulent for this sinner’s neighborhood but not as suspicious as the old Ford Taurus he’d used at past locations.
He parked the car just inside the subdivision and walked toward a three-story home at the end of a cul-de-sac a quarter mile from the entrance to the upper-middle-class neighborhood.
It was taller than the other homes with bright blue trim that looked gaudy and vain set among the plain browns and khakis of its fellows.
A row of cypress trees stood in front of the house, trimmed to look like candle flames.
A fitting metaphor considering the fire into which the soul of its inhabitant would have been cast were it not for Cox's intervention.
That was something Kate refused to see. Cox was saving people. He was cleansing their soul. God called him to lost sheep who wouldn’t repent unless forced to. Yes, it was about the message, the warning to others to repent, but it was, at its core, a gesture of mercy.
She would understand. In the end, she would understand.
He knocked on the door, inhaling deeply of the conifer-scented air.
Cypress had a distinct citrusy undertone to its aroma.
Cox found it cleansing. He’d enjoyed his brief stay in the forest before resuming his mission.
Were his end not predetermined, he would have liked to retire in a forest much like that one.
Nevertheless, not his will but God’s be done.
The door opened, and an elderly man, bald and wearing thick glasses over his faded green eyes, regarded Cox. “Hello?”
Cox smiled tenderly. “Good evening, sir. My name is Father Hiram Gooding. I’m traveling on behalf of the Archdiocese of St. Louis in Father Thompson’s stead. I’ve been assigned to oversee his flock while the father recuperates from his surgery.”
A brief search of the archdiocese’s records had informed Cox that Father Thompson had undergone surgery to replaced a disc in his lower back.
He would be out of commission for the next two weeks.
The priest actually assigned to replace him would introduce himself to the entire congregation that coming Sunday at mass.
Douglas Hale would not live long enough to realize Cox’s deception.
“I see,” the stranger replied. “Well, come on in, father.”
God was good.
Douglas extended a hand to Cox as they crossed the foyer. “I’m Douglas Hale. I’m the chief deacon at the cathedral.”
Kate’s sacrifice was the ultimate goal, but that didn’t mean the correction Cox provided for each transgressed commandment wasn’t important.
This man had transgressed the eighth commandment.
It was no coincidence that this house’s location made it perfect for the cipher.
God had led Cox here because God wanted more people to hear his message.
If this death sent ripples through the Church, then it was God’s attempt to warn them, to give them one more chance to repent before judgment.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Hale,” Cox replied.
“Yes, it’s fortuitous,” Douglas agreed. “I’d been praying for God’s guidance. It appears He has sent exactly that to me.” He looked at Cox. “Are you available to hear my confession, Father?”
Cox smiled at him. “My dear sir, that is the precise reason I’ve come.”
Hale smiled. “Good. I’ve been carrying this weight ever since I was ordained. I just don’t think I can do it anymore. I wanted to confess to Father Thompson, but… I was ashamed. I consider him a friend. I didn’t want him to know.” He chuckled bitterly. “I suppose I should confess that too.”
“Sin is a weight that drags the soul down to hell,” Cox replied, accepting the easy chair to which Hale gestured. “And repentance is the choice to cast one’s sin upon God and have him lift it from your shoulders.”
Hale sat across from Cox and folded his hands pensively.
His eyes fell to an object on the ornately carved mahogany coffee table in front of him.
Cox glanced at the table and saw a set of pearl earrings.
This was the sign God wished him to leave for Kate.
The symbol of Hale’s theft. The beacon Cox would use to point the way to the altar of Kate’s sacrifice.
“How is Father Thompson?” Hale asked.
“He’s in good spirits,” Cox replied. He stared firmly at Hale. “But God didn’t call us here to talk about Father Thompson.”
Hale sighed. “No, I don’t believe he did.”
He sighed again and tapped his fingers together. With his brow drawn together in anxiety, he looked even older than his advanced age.
“You know how to start, I presume,” Cox prodded.
Hale nodded. With a final sigh, he straightened and lifted his eyes to the cross hanging above his fireplace. “Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”
“What is your transgression, my child?”
“Identity theft.”
Cox lifted an eyebrow, feigning surprise. “Identity theft. That’s a serious crime.”
“It is,” Hale agreed. He took a deep breath and smiled. “I already feel better for saying it aloud. It’s good that I’m finally doing this.”
“Confession is good for the soul, as they say,” Cox replied. “Now come. Tell me more, child.”
Hale chuckled. “Sorry. I’ll never get used to that. Father Thompson is young too, younger than you. It’s just odd to be a seventy-eight-year-old man hearing a man young enough to be my son call me child.”
“Your confession is not complete, my child,” Cox reminded him. “You must make a full and honest account of your transgression. Otherwise, your soul is lost.”
“Right.” Hale took another deep breath and released it through his nose. “Those earrings,” he said, nodding at the coffee table. “I bought them to impersonate a woman.”
Once again, Cox feigned surprise. “A woman?”
“Yes. Twelve years ago, I had a colleague, Tesha Barclay, who worked at the bank I managed as a loan officer. A good one. She had a confidence about her, an air of quiet strength that I admired.”
A gleam came to his eyes. Cox resisted an urge to lean forward and controlled the excitement on his face. “Go on.”
“Well, I wanted that confidence. I wanted it for myself.”
“Why?”
Hale shrugged. “I just did.”
Oh yes. He was perfect. “So there was no purpose to this identity theft other than your own gratification?”
“That’s the purpose of all theft, father.
It’s never about what you steal. It’s that you can take it without being stopped.
For some, it’s knowing their victims are helpless and can’t take back what you’ve stolen even if they want to.
For others, it’s knowing that they’re sly enough to evade detection, laughing as their victims realize that something precious to them is missing but unable to know why it’s gone. ”
His voice had grown confident, eager. He may be repentant, but he still recalled the joy his sin provided him.
Fleeting joy, but he’d realize that at the end if he hadn’t realized it yet.
“For me, it was the ability to be someone else,” Hale continued.
“To become an entirely different person. To usurp their life, their traits, their mannerisms and make them mine. You see, father, when I become someone else, I take the essence of their soul. I inhabit their body and make them an outsider to their own life.”
His eyes shone brightly now. A smile split his face from ear to ear. “I wanted Tesha’s life. So I took it.”
A frown pulled at the corners of Cox’s lips.
This was growing close to covetousness rather than theft.
He had a different punishment planned for those who broke the tenth commandment, and in any case, it wasn’t time for that correction.
“And it was the confidence you wanted? You felt unconfident in your own life, so you wanted her life?”
Hale shook his head. “It didn’t matter. I mean, yes, at the time, the confidence intrigued me, but I’ve had a long time to think about it, and I don’t think what I was stealing ever mattered.
Like I said, it’s just the fact that I could.
Tesha Barclay, Frank Strohm, Georgia McMillan, Hamish Ramakrishna…
none of them really mattered. I just felt…
” He reddened. “Forgive me, Father. It was an almost sexual thrill each time someone believed I was one of them. I felt like God.”
He caught himself, reddened further, and looked at Cox. “So you can see why this has weighed on me. I don’t like this part of myself, this part that thinks I can stand in the place of God. It’s evil. I want to let it go. And the first step is to confess and seek God’s mercy.”
Cox smiled at Hale. He was repentant. That was good. This could truly be an act of mercy. “Forgiveness belongs to God, my child, not to me, but I can tell you what God has shown me.”
“What?”
Cox held Hale’s gaze, basked in the childlike innocence of it. Seventy-eight years old, but when the false wisdom humanity associated with age was let go, he came to Cox for assistance just like any child.
Like a lamb.
“God has shown me that he will accept your soul.”
Hale sighed, and the weight vanished in anticipation of God’s mercy. “Oh, praise God. Oh, thank God. Thank you, Father.”
He started to smile, then stopped. His brow furrowed as he watched Cox pull on a pair of black latex gloves. “My soul?”
“Yes.”
So saying, Cox snarled and threw himself at Hale.
The old man’s reflexes were slow, his body weakened by age.
Cox bore him to the ground, straddled his chest, and squeezed.
Blood pulsed under Cox’s fingers, veins throbbing and bulging.
Hale’s eyes reddened from the edges inward as capillaries burst. His mouth opened wide as he struggled fruitlessly to breathe.
His heels beat on the floor, and his hands scrabbled at Cox’s face.
Cox straightened, putting himself out of reach of the shorter Hale’s arms. He leaned onto his hands, pushing his thumbs into Hale’s pharynx.
He heard a muffled crunch as the bones gave way and watched as his fingers sank into the yielding flesh.
Hale’s eyes flew back into his head, and his body trembled as consciousness left him.
Cox moaned in ecstasy and lifted his eyes heavenward, feeling Hale’s pulse weaken, soften, slow, then stop.
The joy of the Holy Spirit infused and enveloped him, rushing through his body like a hurricane.
He closed his eyes and imagined how good it would feel to have Kate underneath him like this, to send her soul to God. That would be true ecstasy.
“God’s will be done,” he whispered, “Oh God, your will be done.”
A final, turgid pump pushed against Cox’s fingers. Then it was done.
Cox sighed and slumped over the body, awash with the glory of God. “Thank you,” he muttered hoarsely. “Thank you, God, for using your servant to exercise your will on Earth.”
He removed his hands. They trembled a little, and he flexed his fingers several times until they calmed.
He got to his feet and looked down at the body, a beatific smile brightening his features. “You are forgiven, my child.”