Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense (23 page)

“Did he ever go to church?”

“Never.”

Finally, Anne reached out across the kitchen table with her hand, not touching Rose but letting her know she was nearby. “Rose, what did Rudy tell you happened to him?”

Rose flicked her gaze upwards and studied the ceiling fan for a few seconds. “He joined the Army when he was seventeen and my dad did nothing to stop him. Fact, thought it might be good for him. Bring him out of his shell. Maybe make him normal again. About a week before Rudy left, I went into his room. I asked him if he was taking his CD player with him to the Army, because I wanted it. He just stared at me for a long time, like
I
was the crazy one or something. Then out of the blue I asked him. I asked what happened to him in those two months.”

Jonas felt his breathing quicken. “What did he say?”

Rose took her time before answering. “Said a man named the Preacherman took him. Older man. Elephant skin and rotten breath, Rudy told me. Said the man locked him up.

Made him eat dog food. Hit him. Raped him. Would strangle him until he was nearly dead then let him breathe again.”

“Jesus,” Jonas muttered.

Rose put her head down and let the words spill out. “Said this Preacherman had a woman who followed right along in it all. Even laughed when the Preacherman cut him with a knife, nearly taking his ear off. Rudy thought he was gonna die and wanted nothing more than death, until he started reading the Bible. Bible that the monster gave him. Rudy said it gave him hope, because one day there would be judgment, and Rudy knew he’d be all right then. So he waited it out. One day, Preacherman wasn’t careful enough, and Rudy got his knife and sliced the old man up. Kilt him. Came home that day.” She paused, then looked up. “Said he never saw the woman again.”

Rose stopped talking. “What else did he say?”

“That was it. He didn’t say nothing else about it. One week later he was gone, and I never saw him again until that video played on the news. He...he killed that woman in Cleveland, didn’t he? I know it’s been such a long time, but the man on the tape was him. I jes know it.”

“We don’t know, Rose. We just need to find him.”

Jonas glanced to his right and looked out the kitchen window. It was dark, but a streetlight glowed in the distance, casting dying embers onto the house. For a moment he thought he saw something move in the window, a head quickly pulling out of view. He looked at Anne and she to him, and he searched her eyes for a flicker of intuition to confirm his paranoia. He saw nothing, then dismissed his concern.

“Why would he want to kill her?” Rose asked.

“It’s nearly impossible to say,” Anne responded. “For someone like him, with his history of abuse, a number of things could trigger violence.”

Jonas looked at the window again. Nothing was there. A knock at the door.

Rose jumped in her seat. “It’s okay,” Anne said.

The door opened and a portly man in a rumpled grey suit stepped inside. He seemed winded from the walk up the stoop. “Time’s up, Ms. Deneuve,” he said.

“Okay,” Anne said. To Rose: “These men are with the FBI. They’re going to ask you a few more questions and then you can get to your hotel.”

“I’m going with them or we’re doing it here?”

“You’re going with them,” Anne said.

Jonas saw a flash of fear in Rose’s eyes.

“It’s okay,” Anne said. “I work with them. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

“Okay,” she said.

Jonas stood and walked over to the agent, introducing himself. He received a nod and mumbled hello.

“You were across the street the whole time?” Jonas asked. “Yeah. Why?”

“You see anyone outside. Lurking around?”

“Lurking?”

“Yeah, you know. Hanging around suspiciously.”

“I know what lurking is.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Because I wasn’t sure if you were being serious. You think me and my partner missed seeing a lurker when you civvies are interrogating someone in conjunction with a serial killer?”

Rose’s voice called from the next room. “Serial killer?”

“Nice work,” Jonas said.

The man squeezed his forehead, as if he could push out the negative thoughts as easily as popping a zit. He looked up defeated.

“Jesus Christ. No,” he said. “No lurker. Or peeping Tom. Or interloper of any sort. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Jonas said. “Take it easy. I was just asking.”

“We need to go now,” the agent said. He put a hand on the back of Rose’s elbow and guided her toward the front door.

When she reached the door, she turned back to Jonas. She looked at him like a beaten dog still searching for approval in her master’s eyes. Jonas knew all she wanted was someone to tell her everything would be okay.

He nodded at her. “It’s okay, Rose. You’ll be okay.”

She nodded back and walked out the door. Jonas couldn’t help but feel he just lied to her.

A RINGTONE
woke him up before the alarm did. Jonas reached over and checked his phone. The first thing he noticed was the caller: Anne. The second thing was the time: 4:32am.

Jonas shook the sleep from his head as he answered. “Anne, what is it?”

Silence for a few seconds.

“She’s dead, Jonas. Rose is dead.” Jonas pushed himself up. “
What?
”

He heard a sniffle. She’d been crying.

“I just got called by the office. A...a grey sedan was found parked next to a city ball field, about two miles from the safe house. Inside were three bodies. He fucking killed Rose, and he killed the two agents who were taking her to debrief.”

“Oh my God.”

“Jonas, I just—”

“
Dead?
All of them? For sure?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God, he was out there. Last night. He was outside your place.”

“I know. I—”

“And you didn’t feel anything? Sense him at all?”

“No, Jonas. It doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes it does, but not always.”

“You say that a lot. Goddamnit. Why didn’t you feel him out there?”

“It’s not my fault they are dead, Jonas.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and let out a slow breath. “I know. I know. I’m...I’m sorry. I just...fuck. I can’t believe this.” A thought occurred to him. “Are you home now?

“Yes.”

“You should get out of there.”

“Jonas, he doesn’t want me. He’s not still around here.”

“He might be. You need to be safe.”

She ignored his request. “Jonas, he used a knife on them. On
all
of them. He overpowered two federal agents, both of whom were armed, and he killed them all with a
knife
.”

“God, I...I told her...”

“I know, Jonas. You told her the same thing I did. We told her everything would be okay. And now she’s dead.”

Jonas stared at his curtained window and tried to understand what it all meant, but he couldn’t focus. The only thing he saw was Rose’s face as she stood by the door, looking for approval.

Jonas had sent her to her slaughter. No matter how everything else turned out, he didn’t think that was something he would ever get past.

Another memory that would haunt him forever.

JULY 21 DENVER, COLORADO

SWEAT RUNS
off Rudiger’s chin and drips onto the stained concrete floor of the abandoned airplane hangar, slickening the surface. Close to a hundred degrees outside. Little cooler inside, but not much. He wants to prop the doors open and get some of the Denver breeze, but can’t chance it. Doors closed and locked. No windows.

He’s pleased with his work. His muscles are developed perfectly for the task. For the cutting, the lifting. The drilling.

The crucifixes will take another day to complete—longer than normal. But this isn’t a normal job. This time there’ll be three instead of one. He uses a small blade to carve ornate designs into the wood of the heavy beams in the main cross. It’ll be his final work. Final crossing, the good Lord had said.

Three months since the last killings.

He thinks of the last time he watched a person die. The woman. His sister. Rose.

He’d tracked her down after attaching a GPS tracking device to Jonas’s car. When he’d seen Rose through the window of the safe house back in D.C., he knew it was her. She’d looked right at him, and though she had only seen darkness, Rudiger saw his sister. She was older, weathered. She had none of the vitality he’d remembered from their youth. But her eyes, their family eyes, were exactly the same as they once had been, and though it had been over two decades, Rudiger could not have been more positive who she was. But he could neither believe nor understand it. There she was, sitting at a table with Jonas Osbourne. The last time he remembered seeing her was on his front porch as he left for the Army. She barely even said goodbye, barely looked up as he left. Bitch didn’t care, even though he’d told her about the Preacherman. He hadn’t told
anyone
about that except her, and she didn’t give two shits about it. She had just wanted his CD player.

Seeing her back in D.C. had been a sign, one that he hadn’t even needed his abilities to unscramble. Whatever Rose had meant to him in the past, her sudden presence was a threat. She was trying to stop Rudiger from doing what it was he needed to do. And he couldn’t let her do that.

Rose needed to die.

Used a knife on her and the two Feds. Next day, it was all the news people could talk about.

Rudiger takes a moment to rest from his work, straightens his body, and wipes the sweat away with a dirty forearm. The hangar is dark—he doubts electricity has flowed through the overhead lights in years—and only his head-mounted light allows him to see what he’s doing.

He’ll need to get a generator and proper lighting.

It’s a small hanger, probably never housing more than a Cessna or two. It decays in the open farmland ten miles east of downtown Denver. A hundred feet away an empty house rots.

Rudiger is lucky to have this place. A fortunate discovery. Nobody’ll bother him here, and by the time they do it’ll be too late.

He twists his neck and the beam of light atop his forehead sweeps along the rusted steel walls of the hangar. Pieces of chewed gum hold hand-torn strips of newspaper to the metal. Articles written about Rudiger. A lot of them. Rudiger’s become quite famous in the last few months. He’s collected them and made a shrine to a life he’s still only beginning to discover.

Ever since his sister died, the story of the serial killer has been all over the press. Rudiger read about his life.

The killer’s name is Rudiger Fitzgerald, the stories said. Grew up in western Virginia with two normal parents and a younger sister. When he was twelve years old, Rudiger disappeared coming home from his paper route. His bike was found on a dirt road on a wooded area of his town, but Rudiger had vanished. Two months later Rudiger returned home on his own, bloody and abused, but never spoke of what happened to him. The body of Thomas Wilcott, a 62-year-old drifter and self-anointed preacher originally from Kansas, was discovered two miles away in an abandoned house, with severe stab wounds to his mouth, neck, and side of his head (his ear had been removed). The murder weapon was never found, and it was never confirmed Rudiger was the killer, but Rudiger’s blood in the home’s basement did confirm this was where the boy had been kept—and abused—for two months. After returning home, Rudiger rarely spoke, except to shout passages from the Bible, an influence from his time in captivity. His trauma seemed to amplify a talent his parents noted since he was a young boy—the ability to hear or see words and almost instantly find anagrams of them. Rudiger excelled at complex problem solving but failed miserably at school. Had been an asocial teenager. Other kids referred to him as Rain Man. A Bible freak.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN said Rudiger might have

Asperger’s Syndrome.

When he was seventeen, Rudiger changed his last name to Sonman and joined the Army. Shipped off to Somalia.

There was an incident in Mogadishu, the press reported, though details seem hard to come by. A whole family had been killed. Rudiger Sonman swiftly disappeared.

Yeah, Rudiger thinks. I did disappear.

He scans the articles again, reading but knowing he won’t find a single one that says how he was able to get out of Somalia and back into the U.S. Not one reporter figured it out, but that’s only because they’d have to talk to two Somali men who gave him medical treatment for bullet and shrapnel wounds, then agreed to smuggle Rudiger onto a cargo ship in exchange for five thousand dollars. Rudiger hadn’t killed them. But they didn’t get their money.

He peers closer at an article in the
New York Times
, written just a week ago. The reporter is smart, having been the first person to pick up Rudiger’s trail after his time in the Army. Woman by the name of Gloria (“
Liar go,” his mind reads
)connected Rudy Sonman with a man named Rudiger Mortisin who worked as an independent building contractor in Salt Lake City as recently as two years ago. Interviews with co-workers said little except that Rudiger worked hard, kept to himself, and had an ugly scar on his left ear that he never spoke about. One day he was gone, not unusual in that field. His ex-boss remembered him once saying something about going on a trip.