Previous Installments-
Part One
Prologue and Chapters I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
PartThree
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXX
Radu-Chapter XXX (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
10 pages approximate
Phelps had no idea what he was getting himself into when he agreed to drive Khoska out into, it turned out, a remote area of West Virginia just across the Maryland border. His desire to turn back, however, seemed to grow with every passing mile. He was an urban creature by nature. Trips to the county never seemed to work out well for him. Still, he wanted to help Grace Rodescu because he considered her a friend and colleague, and realized that whatever she was involved in may well be big.
Phelps struggled for years to make a name for himself as a news photographer, but certain unfortunate aspects of his personality seemed to stand in the way. This might be his one last chance to make his mark in the world of real journalism. The fact that Grace may have indeed been tied up with some international sex slavery ring, may even have been victimized her own self, as a child no less, hinted at the prospects of something that was more than just big. It might possibly be explosive.
“So you say these people are big name businessmen and politicians,” Phelps noted as they moved past the Maryland state line into what promised to be a trip to the wilds of civilization.
“Not all of them are, I am sure,” Khoska replied. “Certainly, most of their clients are men of wealth and power. They are the kind of people that due to the natures of their positions in society are obliged to silence. From what I understand about these things, they are vetted and cleared by way of an arduous process that might entail months, if not years. They are wiling to pay dearly for the opportunity to indulge their perversions. Then, of course, once they are in so deep, there is no turning back, even if they wanted. They are open to extortion by the nature of their crimes.”
“And you say this deceased son-in-law of yours was one of the ringleaders,” Phelps continued.
“He was not at the very top of the leadership,” Khoska affirmed. “However, he was highly placed. This of course was before I discovered his involvement and turned him in to the church hierarchy. Afterwards, he and a small group of others were defrocked. Sometimes I am at wonder that I have remained alive over the more than ten years since this occurred.
“On the other hand, there is a saying, perhaps you have heard of it. Revenge is like fine liquor. The longer it ages, the more it is to be savored. Of course, there is also the prospect that in the case of revenge, it is more difficult to trace its point of origin.”
“So what does all this have to do with this place we’re going?” Phelps demanded. “You say this is the place you first met Grace.”
“It is a cabin,” Khoska replied. “It used to belong to a man named Karl Groznyy. Technically, it still does, though under an assumed name. I have made it a point to continue paying the utilities and taxes on the property-in his name, of course-for the last thirteen years. Still, it has been all of that time since I have set foot on the place and as such, I have made no repairs to it. It goes without saying then that you should not expect it to be anything other than ramshackle and run-down at this point.
“I hope that my memory will suffice to ensure we take the right roads. As I told you before, it is very remote.”
They remained silent most of the remainder of the way outside of what times Khoska informed Phelps as to the proper turns to make. The old priest realized that, for all these years, his memory seemed all but engraved with the mental map seared into his mind from all those years ago. The closer they got the more certain he was as to the correctness of their route.
“I still don’t understand why it is you wanted to involve me in all this,” Phelps stated. “What is it you think I can do to help?”
“You want to help your friend, for whatever reason,” Khoska replied. “I know enough to realize that you might be one of the few people she trusts. I am almost one hundred percent positive she will turn to you at one point or another. When she does, I am of the hopes that you will help her, though not in the exact way she will unfortunately seek your help.”
“You want me to turn her in, assuming she’s doing something illegal to begin with,” Phelps observed.
“Not turn her in to the authorities, so much as keep me abreast of her movements,” Khoska assured him. “I know enough to realize it is almost a certainty you will agree to help her. In a sense, I wish you would not, for I fear your life might be in danger. Grace will discard you like worn out underwear once she uses you for all she can get. I know you do not want to believe this, but I have a feeling you shall more than believe it, within the hour. We are almost to our destination.
“In about twenty minutes, there will be a narrow, paved road that leads up a steep hillside. Hopefully, it will not have been overrun by the shrubbery that used to merely hide it from view. Groznyy paved it his own self shortly after he purchased the property, but he did not do so until the road is quite out of view from the one on which we are on now. He feared otherwise the entire road would be washed out.”
Khoska pointed out the turn off and Phelps cautiously angled his vehicle into what appeared to be merely a small clearing, and then began what was actually a torturous ascent up a muddy embankment.
“Are you sure about this?” he demanded. “I could blow my damn engine trying to get up here.”
“It’s not much further, I promise,” Khoska replied.
Phelps cursed under his breath as he continued, fearing the thickness of the foliage would be as much of an impediment as the steepness of the hillside due to the slow speed he was obliged to drive. Finally, he made it through to where there was indeed a paved road, yet his back tires now seemed mired in the muddy dirt at his back. He continued, shifting the gears of his van, at times slipping backwards, as the dense foliage surrounded them at the front and on all sides. Finally, with one final thrust on the accelerator, he positioned all four wheels of the van onto the narrow blacktopped road. It was easier at this point to drive trough the dense brush, which he yet was obliged to struggle through all the way to the top of the more than one hundred foot hill.
Finally, they were there. Khoska could barely see the house through the grown up grass and trees, as he hoped the roof was yet intact, though from what he could see of it, it seemed undamaged.
“Holy shit, Grace used to live here?” Phelps demanded.
“For no more than a couple of weeks,” Khoska replied. “She was in the process of recovering from severe injuries she received while in the course of being raped by four men, who as it happened intended to murder her. Groznyy took pity on her and saved her, or she would have surely died that night from her injuries and from exposure, after they abandoned what they thought was her dead body. Groznyy discovered her wandering the countryside, in a daze.
“Then, after he transported her to this place, he had the misfortune to allow his sentimentality to get the better of him, and he imagined himself to be in love with her. Things did not turn out so well for him. But, enough of this monologue. It is time for you to see this for yourself. Come, let us go inside.”
Phelps followed him warily into the cabin. Khoska had kept the keys to the cabin in a secure place after all this time, and though the lock was rusty, it took him no more than three minutes to unlock the door, which opened with some difficulty, as the wood was quite warped. It swung open with a creak, as one of the hinges was especially loose. All of them needed oiling.
Khoska was pleasantly surprised that the lights yet worked, though they served mainly to reveal the severe need for cleaning from the dust and mold that accumulated over the many years since he last had been here. He made his way toward the master bedroom, urging Phelps to follow behind him. He did, though warily, having brought along his camera.
Khoska unlocked the bedroom door and entered. The first thing he noticed was the window, which after all this time yet remained unbroken, though tree limbs brushed against and covered it. He had silently prepared himself for the worse sight, toward which he soon heard Phelps let out a gasp.
“Who in the hell was that?” he demanded, indicating the partially mummified and skeletal remains of the man who remained in the same position in which Khoska last left him.
“Karl Emil Groznyy,” Khoska replied, then indicating the aluminum baseball bat that set on the floor beside the bed. “That is the weapon with which Grace murdered him in his bed.”
Phelps stared at the old priest in disbelief, but recovered his composure long enough to quickly take a series of photos.
“All right, even if that is true, she was a kid,” he stated after he finished shooting. “She had just gone through hell, and this guy, regardless of his later intentions, you say yourself was a part of the group that victimized her, and she knew that. Is this what you were trying to warn me about? This is what you think makes her some kind of cold blooded killer?”
“No,” he replied as he moved toward the mold covered oak dresser that set off to the side of the king sized bed. “What makes her a cold-blooded killer are the things she did in the years following this night. This you see before you now was only the initiatory stage of what was to become a spiritual malignancy that would in time claim many victims, most of whom were, unlike Groznyy, innocent of any wrongdoing.”
He opened the drawer, and found the dead man’s gun. Alongside it, he found a leather-bound address book.
“You left this guy here all this time, and you never reported it,” Phelps observed. “Why?”
He looked at the skeleton, his skull caved in and his brains long decomposed. His tattered nightclothes all but gone, he could discern the extent of mummification that occurred over the years. Though Grozny’s face was long gone, a good portion of his torso remained, dried and leathery, due to the intense cold of those first few weeks in which his body lay, with no heat circulating throughout the remote cabin.
“I could never bring myself to return here,” Khoska replied. “I don’t know for sure why I continued paying the bills on the place. I had this crazy idea I might eventually make some kind of sense out of what happened here this night so long ago. I wanted to come up here and give him some kind of decent burial, but never did. I wanted to come up here and look for some kind of clues, but I never did. Now, I’m afraid I might be far too late.”
Khoska now thumbed through the pages of the address book, but saw few with any names, his being one of the few exceptions. He never realized this. What if someone had discovered this crime scene, and this address book? The authorities would have certainly contacted him. What would he have told them? How would it have looked had they discovered he made regular payments on the property?
“So what was it Grace was supposed to have done after this?” Phelps repeated.
“I secured her adoption into a good family,” Khoska replied. “They were Americans of Romanian descent. They raised her as their own child, loved her and cared for her, and saw to all her needs. Both they and I helped her through years of therapy, and secured her passage into college.
“Then, one day, she recovered her memory, at the age of sixteen-in fact, it happened on the night of her sixteenth birthday party. It came flooding back to her in a torrent. Fortunately, she seemed to recover, following more hospitalization and intensive therapy, but she was never the same after that.
“Within five years time, the entire family was dead. It started with the oldest girl, who developed a severe case of a particularly virulent strain of flu. Grace moved in with her, and cared for her. In the meantime, Grace went through all her money. By the time she went through every last penny, the poor woman was dead, at a very young age, from an illness that, though certainly serious, by any account should not have been fatal.
“Grace used all her money on drugs-on heroin. She later started an affair with the husband of yet another sister. That sister was killed as the result of a bizarre accident. She tripped and fell down the stairs, after she as well came down with a mysterious illness. The husband of course inherited quite a bit of money in an insurance settlement that amounted to more than a hundred thousand dollars.
“He later died an apparent suicide, and a large portion of his money disappeared. Curiously, a similarly large amount of money ended up deposited in Grace’s account. She went through it quickly, of course, presumably as well spent on drugs. It goes without saying, I should add, that Grace was a frequent companion of the husband following the wife’s demise, and was a frequent houseguest of the couple before her death as well.”
Phelps looked at him in disbelief, not sure whether to believe him or not.
“That’s all you got?” he demanded. “You got any proof to go with all this, or is it all just supposition?”
Khoska was more than slightly amused, despite the gravity of the events described.
“You work for a paper that reports the most bizarre gossip and rumors imaginable as though it were all fact, yet you question the veracity of stories I have worked diligently to confirm over the course of years,” he observed. “Every word I tell you is true. I will tell you something else. Grace Rodescu by all rights should have been imprisoned years ago, but was not. Someone has been looking out for her. Who this might have been I do not know, though I have my suspicions.
“If she were not imprisoned for the things I told you, then it perhaps would have been appropriate were she charged with the murder of an older foster brother, one who in fact told her some months before his death that he wanted nothing more to do with her. Shortly afterwards, he was the victim of a house invasion that ended with him brutally beaten to death by unknown assailants, rumored to be members of the Seventeenth Pulse. It so happens that Grace was said to have a connection with this group at the time-a drug connection, of course.”
“Rumors, suppositions, and innuendo,” Phelps declared. “I know about that brother. I’ll have you know Grace wanted the paper to look into it. She was sure he was involved with the mafia and owed them money.”
“And of course nothing ever came of this, did it?” Khoska inquired. “Doubtless this was due to the fact that that the only criminal connection the young man had was in fact incidental, and through Grace. I somehow doubt she told you of that, however, or of that brother’s true feelings towards her, and why he had those feelings. Well, I will tell you. It had to do with yet another foster brother, one whom she in fact engaged in an affair with. It was not technically incest. Of course, I seriously doubt it would trouble Grace if it were. It was more a practical necessity. See, this young man himself was a drug addict, but he had the misfortune as well to suffer an injury on the job. He was incapacitated, and drew a great amount of workman’s comp. Grace, being a drug addict herself, helped him spend his money over the course of four months, until he died of an overdose.
“Grace, being Grace, continued to cash his checks in order to pursue her addiction, until this was eventually discovered. She was charged, of course, but the charges were dropped, for whatever reason. There is actually no longer a record of any of this, so you need not bother to look for it. I assure, you, however, it is all true.
“Just like it is true how she constantly borrowed money from yet another of the sisters, until that sister had enough and told her no more. A few days later, the house burned down around her, leaving her dead. I think Grace got all of two thousand dollars out of that escapade, which went quickly. Still, this was all the unfortunate woman had laying around the house. Had it been no more than two hundred dollars instead of two thousand, I am sure it would have been all the same.”
Phelps was now silent, and grim. He did not want to believe any of this, but something about it all rang painfully true.
“Grace was always bad for borrowing money,” he said. “I know I’ve loaned her more than six hundred dollars myself here and there, and I’ve never gotten a dime of it back. Well, not in money anyway.”
“In other words, she let you fuck her, to use the vulgar expression,” Khoska observed as he continually flipped through the address book. “With Grace, of course, that is certainly a more appropriate terminology than something such as making love, which is something I seriously doubt she has ever experienced.
“Her foster parents are dead, of course,” he continued. “Yes, she saved them for the last. The mother died of a heart attack. Grace was at this time the sole survivor, and she moved in with the bereaved widower, and took care of him. She took care of him, all right. He died two weeks after the woman was buried, a supposed suicide. Grace of course inherited everything. She also quickly went through every penny of this inheritance, including the money from the proceeds of the sell of the house.
“All of these things, by the way, occurred within a span of time that amounts to roughly two years and ten months. Although she has nothing left to show for it, Grace within this amount of time managed to destroy the hopes and dreams of an entire family of people that loved and protected her, took her in with open arms, and did everything they could possibly do to help and support her.
“I never told you of course about the three children, her foster nieces and nephew. That is just as well, of course, as there is nothing to tell. They seem to have disappeared. I often wonder if they are yet alive, holed up in some hellhole, forced into prostitution and child pornography, as Grace herself had been. I sometimes think that would appeal to her sense of irony.”
“All right,” Phelps said, more sadly than defiantly. “I get it. You don’t have to go any further. I just don’t understand why you think I can help you, or how. I hope you paid the water bill on this place. I need to go to the john.”
“There’s no sewer, just a septic tank. The water is from a well Groznyy dug himself. I would not advise drinking any of it.”
Phelps nodded and walked out. As he left, Khoska looked toward the phone. Luckily, it was a standard phone, not dependent on batteries, which would surely have died after so many years. He only hoped the phone wires, which lead through the dense foliage, were intact. He picked up the phone and, though there was a dial tone, he immediately noted the static.
He recognized one of the numbers Groznyy had written down years before, and it made his heart ache. He quickly dialed the number, and sure enough, his own son, Philip Khoska, answered.
“Hello, who is this?” the easily recognizable voice of his youngest son inquired. “Is anybody there?”
Khoska considered the prospect of addressing his son, but was not quite sure what to say. How deeply involved in this was he, he wondered? He also recognized the number of his late son-in-law Voroslav, both numbers, like his own, circled. Is this the reason Groznyy had turned to him in desperation after all, so many years ago?
“Karl, is that you?” his son finally asked. Khoska gasped when he heard this.
“Come on Groznyy, talk to me,” he insisted. “Where have you been all this time? We need to talk. You know that, why else would you have called?”
Khoska was now too stunned to speak, even if he wished to. What would Phillip say if he knew it was he calling from Groznyy’s number?
“It’s not too late, Groznyy. We can work it out. You know the time is short. We all know, Karl, how you saved Grace Rodescu. Yeah, you betrayed us all, but that has been years ago. We can work something out. It is not too late. You can pull through this, my friend. You can be one of the survivors, or you can die like all the rest of the”-
After this, the line filled with static, so Khoska heard nothing. He cursed under his breath, even though he dreaded the prospect of the words spoken this night by his son and their meaning. It occurred to him then that his son would now know the general area from which the call originated. Could he possibly trace it somehow to this exact location? Suddenly, the line cleared, if just briefly, and Khoska could hear now the increasingly agitated voice of his son.
“You need to get to a better line, Grozhny,” he said. “Better yet, you should come to the compound, before it’s too late. You know about Morrison, I take it? It won’t be much longer. He’s going to bring everything crashing down. I’ll be ready. Will you?”
Suddenly, Phillip hung up at his end, terminating the call. He turned uneasily, unsure of what it all meant, and looked toward the long dead remains of Karl Emil Groznyy.
“Groznyy, what were you involved in, my friend?”
He looked toward the door, to see Phelps standing there looking at him, looking very disturbed, even curiously frightened.
“I guess we can go on now,” Khoska said as he deposited the address book within the pockets of his robe.
“Did you forget to tell me about something?” Phelps asked, obviously more anxious now than previously.
“Who’s the Girl Scout?”
“The Girl Scout-what Girl Scout?” the now bewildered Khoska asked.
“The one laying in the other bedroom, dead, that’s what Girl Scout.” Phelps answered.
Quickly, Khoska pushed past him and out the door, down the hallway to the bedroom that sat across the hall from the bathroom. He entered the room, only to see the form of the young girl, obviously dead for some time. Cautiously, he approached her.
“She has not been here that long,” Khoska said, trying to control the anguish at the sight of such a young girl. “She must have gotten lost and found her way here before she died. Who knows how long she has been sought?”
Phelps was now taking pictures of the dead girl’s body to Khoska’s consternation. Then, he noticed something.
“Wait just a minute,” he said. “If she died here, what the hell has been eating her? Look at this!”
Phelps pointed out the gashes on the girl’s naked abdomen. Khoska made a superhuman attempt to control his horrified revulsion as he looked upon the marks left by what appeared to be talons in close proximity to the gash from an apparent scavenger.
“If I didn’t know better I would swear it is the work of a vulture,” he noted. “Still, as you said, why would she be here?”
“That does it!” Phelps declared. “I’m getting the hell out of here. When we get back to Baltimore, I’m calling the authorities and leaving an anonymous tip. I hope there is nothing here that can tie you to this place. That guy in there I don’t care about. Whoever she is-that is a different story. By the way, did that creep have any food in here?”
“He had it well stocked, yes, what difference does that make?”
Phelps moved swiftly into the small kitchen that Groznyy had years before built and equipped with a year-and-a-half worth of provisions. He moved to the refrigerator, only to discover upon opening it that it was nearly bare, save for one very interesting exception. Phelps retuned with an unopened bottle of Samuel Adams Beer.
“I might be wrong, but I don’t think this beer was brewed thirteen years ago, or at least it wasn’t readily available around here-if at all.”
“I think you’re right,” Khoska said, growing more visibly alarmed. “We had better leave, and quickly.”
Before Phelps could respond, the door quickly flew open, and a group of men entered, looking alternately amused, concerned, alarmed, curious, enraged, to outright hysterical.
“Well who the hell are you boys?” one of the dirty, grubby looking men asked.
“Oh-shit!” Phelps muttered under his breath, as another of the men walked up to Khoska.
‘That’s a right purty dress you’s wearing there, hon,” he said with a lecherous sneer.
“Better step away from him Luther,” the first man advised him. “Something tells me they ain’t here to play.”
“Well I’m a-gonna play with him anyway god damn you!” the wild-eyed man shouted, his eyes suddenly transformed in the space of an instant from glazed over lust to savage hatred and defiance.
“Fine, fine,” the other man replied as he held up his hands in an entreaty of peace, as a third man, seemingly the youngest of the group of five, produced a long, thick handled knife with which he pared his nails while gazing with a sadistic smile at Phelps.
“I get the nigger,” he said. “I always did love to play with niggers. They are fun to play with.”
“Try to stay calm,” Khoska told Phelps, who seemed now on the verge of tears.
“Don’t you talk to me, you fucking old fart,” he replied with a hiss.
“Why don’t you take that perty robe off,” Khoska’s admirer suggested, as a fourth man entered, one who seemed only vaguely aware of his surroundings, as he lurched forward and backward while he mumbled incoherently, seeming to concentrate on his right arms and hand as he shook it in unison with his steps.
“No, I will not take this robe off,” Khoska replied firmly, yet as calmly as he could manage. He then addressed the one man who seemed to be the most relatively stable of the group, as yet a fifth man entered, one who had black eyes that blazed with a fury, yet seeming not to be directed towards him or Phelps, but toward the knife of the youngest man of the group.
“My son sent me here to check on you,” Khoska announced. “He wants to make sure you have all the provisions you need, enough to do you for a few more weeks if necessary.”
To his consternation, the man produced a cell phone.
“Why didn’t he call us and let us know you were coming?” he demanded. “Why did you bring that nigger with you?”
“Don’t mind him, he’s just a servant, one of the good ones,” Khoska replied with a desperate glance toward Phelps, who merely shook his head in silent anguish. “He wanted me to come but did not want you to know. He wanted to be sure as to how things were really going.”
“Oh, so he don’t trust us?” the man asked. “Well, that makes sense. Kind of like a surprise inspection, huh?”
“That’s exactly what it is, exactly-a surprise inspection. I am afraid he is going to be displeased at the young lady you have brought up here. People will be looking for her, you know.”
They looked around at each other and smiled. The young man giggled like a silly schoolboy.
“They already have been,” he said. “They split up in groups of three.”
“Hey, Charlie, bring ‘em in here,” the older man shouted, whereupon two more men entered, in the company of three obviously terrified young girls dressed in scout uniforms. They looked to all be no more than about twelve years old. One of the girls cried inconsolably as one of the men gripped her around the waste from behind and held her back tightly up against his groin, as he swayed in a rhythmic motion.
“I hope you brought us some more beer,” the apparent leader of the group said. “We sure can use some.”
Khoska was now frantic, and knew that nothing short of a miracle would deliver him from the predicament in which he now found himself.
“No, I’m afraid not,” he said. “He wants you to be ready to leave here within a couple of days. He will be sending someone else here soon to take you some place else, a place much better than this. In the meantime, you must let these girls go.”
“No,” the young man replied. “Not until we have our fun. After we get us some we’ll send them on their way-provided they shut the fuck up, that is.”
He said this with a threatening glare toward the one girl who cried loudly, but this only made matters worse. Her crying enraged the young man, who shouted for her to shut up, and then struck the young girl across the face so harshly her glasses went flying off and almost halfway across the room. Khoska automatically lunged toward the young man, but a sudden sharp pain sent him sprawling toward the floor, as everything went black.
He found himself at the kitchen table, sitting upright, as Groznyy poured what seemed to be red wine into a glass.
“It’s been a long time, my friend,” he said. “Come, let us have a drink. Let us drink some wine, and talk of Romania.”
Khoska knew he was dreaming, or hallucinating, or possibly as dead now as Groznyy, who now poured the wine in his own glass, as he looked at Khoska with a genial smile on his face.
“You were intending to warn me about them all the time, weren’t you, Groznyy. You wanted to warn me about Voroslav, and about Phillip-about my own family. That is why you came to me to begin with, isn’t it?”
“Khoska, there is plenty of time for such serious matters,” Groznyy replied. “This wine, it is really much better than the shit they used to make in Romania, even better than what they make there now. It is better even than good Bulgarian wine. This in fact is a very old vintage. Some might consider it an ancient one. Please, drink”-
Khoska, reluctant and yet curious, took the glass and sipped the wine, as Groznyy looked on approvingly, and yet expectantly.
“Groznyy, my God, man-this is not wine, this is blood.”
The face of Karl Emil Groznyy now took on a deadly serious aspect as his eyes and his voice burned into Khoska’s consciousness.
“That is always the way of it, though, is it not? The blood is the life.”
He awoke with a pounding ache from the back of his head, only to see Phelps in the course of wiping his head with a damp cloth. He lay stretched out on the old dust-covered sofa. His vision was blurred, but gradually coming more into focus.
“It’s about time your old ass came to,” Phelps said. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“Those men,” he said. “What about the girls! Where are they?”
He strained to rise, feeling dizzy and nauseous, as Phelps helped him up.
“They found some wine in a locked closet in the cellar. Evidently, your friend expected unwanted company at some point. They picked the perfect time to have a party with it. They just run out of the booze left them by whoever brought them up here. They have been here ever since the hospital bombing. They were all Johns Hopkins mental patients. I thought I recognized a couple of them from their pictures in the paper. We’ve been doing a series of exposés about their release. It was explained as some kind of bureaucratic snafu.”
Khoska rose and saw all the men sprawled out. Some of them were obviously dead. Only two of them, the young man with the knife and the fierce looking man with dark eyes, seemed yet alive, though obviously very deathly sick. The dark eyed man groaned loudly.
“My God!” Khoska muttered.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence they ended up here, and judging by all that horseshit you were talking about somebody sending you here to check on them, I don’t think you do either. I will tell you one thing, though, whatever brought them here, God had nothing to do with it.”
Khoska looked down toward the coffee table, and saw a Bible. He saw something else-a book of instruction for the Catholic faith.
“Only in a very obscene, hellish way,” Khoska replied. He then turned toward Phelps, who looked exhausted.
“What happened to the girls?”
Phelps looked back toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms.
“They’re gone,” he said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
They exited the cabin to the break of day, and Phelps noticed the vulture, perched on a protruding trunk. Khoska saw it as well. It looked as though it laughed at them silently, curiously amused by their presence here this morning, as the sun just now rose. Khoska looked down the hillside, now overgrown with weeds, the same place where he first saw Grace Rodescu on that day when she seemed recovered from the trauma of her previous assault.
“Are you coming?” Phelps asked. Khoska looked over toward him. Phelps was seemingly numb, almost in a state of shock. Khoska noted how his wrists looked bloody from the effort of freeing himself from the ropes that bound him throughout most of the night. He must have known deep down how lucky he was to be alive. Khoska had not yet been conscious enough for it to sink in, though it gradually did. As Phelps started up the van, he gasped, and then cried loudly. Then he stopped, and cursing loudly, he put the van into gear, and drove away slowly.
As they left, Khoska looked once more down the ravine, and from this vantage point saw a glimpse of the old creek. A part of him hoped he would see some sign of life, but in this place of death, he knew it was just as well he did not. Suddenly, Phelps stopped.
“Our being up here didn’t change a damn thing,” he observed. “Everything that happened up here tonight that didn’t involve us would have happened without us, just the way it did, maybe just a little quicker, that’s all. I did not need to see that. I did not need to see any of it.
“They intended to hunt down the whole troop, all fifteen of them, plus the camp leader and the other two adult women with them. They were going to get them all while they hunted for the missing girl. Do you know what they said? They said they were saving them from the world, and that it was going to be hell on earth soon. They kept talking about something called Radu. I don’t guess you know anything about that?”
Khoska stiffened when he heard this, but was not quite sure how to respond
“They were insane,” Khoska said. “What would you expect them to say? Certainly, nothing sensible I should hope. Did they mention who it was who brought them here?”
“They didn’t mention your son, if that’s what you mean. They did not say anything about that. They had other things on their minds. They made the girls pray, before they made them strip, and sing, and dance, while they watched and”-
He could not go on. He stopped and took a deep breath.
“Before they could get to the point of killing them, which I’m sure is what they intended, they were unconscious from the effects of the wine. The girls grabbed their clothes and ran away. They did not stick around to help us, not that I blame them. I had to free myself.”
Khoska once more noted the swollen, bloodied wrists of the photographer, and wondered that he had the strength and nerve to drive away from here.
“So what is it about this son of yours?” Phelps now asked. “You mentioned him for a reason.”
“I was desperate,” Khoska explained. “I found my son’s number in Groznyy’s address book. They were involved in some way, but Phillip had nothing to do with this. When I called, after all these years he remembered Groznyy’s phone number. He assumed I was Groznyy calling him. He thought Groznyy was still alive. No, someone else was responsible for this abomination. I have no idea yet who.”
“Do you have a son named Berry?” Phelps asked. “One of them mentioned something about-you know something, fuck this.”
Suddenly, Phelps got out of his van and walked back toward the cabin, almost before Khoska could raise an objection. When he did so, Phelps waved him off, leaving Khoska to fear his intentions. While Phelps was away, he breathed deeply and said a prayer of thanks for his evident salvation from what could have been a night of unmitigated horror ending in destruction. As he sat there, the one thought reverberated throughout his brain.
Berry. It had to be the Lieutenant. He was up to his neck somehow in this business, from beginning to end. How could he ever hope to prove it now? Should he confide his suspicions with Phelps? Soon, the muckraking newspaper photographer returned to the van, opened the back door, and deposited something inside. He then returned to the driver’s seat, and began once more the long, torturous ride downhill.
“They’re all dead. I got pictures of them, as well as the dead Girl Scout and your friend. By God after what I went through tonight, I deserve to get something out of this. It was all I could do to keep from setting the whole damn place on fire. It would not take much for me to go back and do it now. At least your friend would get somewhat of a send-off. Seeing as how he saved our asses from beyond the grave and all, it seems appropriate. On the other hand, I figure if I do burn the place down, that would destroy whatever evidence there might be to catch these people, whoever or whatever they are.”
Soon, they were back down at the bottom of the hill, the descent not near as torturously difficult as the trip up the hill had been. Soon, they were winding their way back to Baltimore. Khoska had the overpowering urge to sleep, but feared doing so. He knew that soon, pictures of the remains of the long dead Karl Groznyy would stare out from newsstands and grocery counters across Maryland and beyond.
“So, do you have any idea who this Berry might be?” he asked.
“He is a Lieutenant with the Baltimore Police Department,” Khoska replied. “I would advise you to keep this to yourself until we can be certain of finding something in the way of proof. I will tell you one thing about him though.”
Phelps said nothing, as they soon found their way to more familiar terrain, Phelps now barreling toward the Maryland border as though yet in fear of his life.
“I’m waiting,” he said, as though fearing the worse.
“When Grace was apprehended for cashing her dead foster brothers workman’s comp checks, and it was discovered she used the money for drugs, it was Berry who was assigned to her case. It was Berry who went on to investigate her role in the suspicious deaths of her other family members.”
He waited, allowing this a few moments to sink in, as Phelps slowed considerably, his eyes focused firmly on the narrow, winding road, yet intent on the words Khoska spoke.
“It was Lieutenant James Berry,” Khoska finally concluded, “who in fact I am sure now destroyed any evidence he might have discovered concerning her role in those events.”
Khoska felt a wave of relief concurrent with dread. What if he were wrong, he wondered. There was always that possibility and he had been down so many dark and misleading paths, he could not be completely sure this was not yet another one. At the same time, as the lights of the beckoning and yet threatening metropolis glistened in the distance, he felt a sense of near certainty, and breathed deeply, yet sadly.
“Why would he be doing all this?” Phelps asked. “What possible reason could he have?”
“I wish I knew, Mr. Phelps,” Khoska replied sadly. “I only wish I knew.”
