Intimate Betrayal (38 page)

She visualized the blueprints of the foundation area. “One of the primary water pipes runs along the south wall, and there’s
a cut-off valve in the crawl space where our pipe links with the city’s. Plumbing access was necessary, so we have the trapdoor.
It’s in one of the side-aisle chapels.”

“Wow. I never found it,” Vico said.

“Unless you know plumbing, you wouldn’t suspect it was there.”

“We can get out, into the cathedral, through this trapdoor?” Matt asked.

“We ought to be able to, yes.”

“Which chapel is it? How far along the wall?”

“I’m not sure. Somewhere toward the middle, I think. But
I’m totally disoriented down here. We’ll have to search them one by one.”

“Come on, then. Let’s find the sucker.”

Once back inside the cathedral, the first and most important thing Sam had to take care of was securing the various exits.
He didn’t want to be interrupted while he worked. And he needed to make sure nobody could get into the building—or out—between
the time he exited and the moment he detonated the explosives by remote control.

From his sports bag he removed a length of chain and threaded it through the brass handles that had just recently been attached
to the huge door at the west entrance. The doors were solid; nobody would get through them.

He secured the chain with a padlock.

He then attended to the north and south transept doors. He planned to exit through the tunnel in the basement that led to
the youth center next door. He had parked his car several blocks away. With luck, it wouldn’t be noticed.

Working quickly, Sam moved from pillar to pillar in the nave of the cathedral, planting explosives. He’d chosen six of the
columns as the ones most critical. They were stone with a core of steel, and they were designed to withstand the force of
a major earthquake. But the building was not designed to withstand the stress of powerful explosives going off simultaneously
at all the greatest stress points.

The cathedral would fall.

And what a terrible destruction it would be. Had the church been completed, it would have been more than two years
under construction. It would have been the largest cathedral built in San Francisco in modern times.

But it would take less than ten seconds to bring it down.

“Somebody is walking around inside the cathedral,” Paolina whispered. She and Annie had finally located the right chapel and
the trapdoor. Matt was checking one a few yards down and Vico was checking one up on the other side.

Unable to endure being in the crawl space for one second longer, Annie had pried open the trapdoor and hoisted herself up
into the chapel. Paolina had followed, and now they were crouched behind a marble statue of St. Joan. “That doesn’t look like
Fletcher.”

“There’s a nightwatchman, but he usually doesn’t come inside,” Annie said.

“See for yourself,” Paolina whispered. “Be careful. Don’t let him see you.”

At first Annie didn’t see anything. Then she caught a glimpse of a dark figure, moving quietly but not stealthily. He seemed
confident, capable, and not concerned about being seen.
He was standing back and looking at something at the base of one of the columns that held up the barreled arch of the roof.
He approached the column, bent down, and examined something at its base. Then he backed up again and nodded. He lifted something
from the floor and moved up the nave toward the next column.

It was Sam.

Annie’s heart began to race. He was dressed entirely in black, even to the watch cap covering his bright hair. She knew him
by his walk, by the way he stood, the way he tilted his head.

What was he doing? Whatever it was, he was focused and purposeful. Whatever it was, it was not good.

Annie ducked back behind the statue and thought for an instant. Paolina was looking at her, her eyes wide and frightened.
“Is it the watchman?”

Annie shook her head. She had to find out what Sam was doing. But she had a sick suspicion in the pit of her stomach.

If those were explosives he was attaching to the columns, they were hiding inside what was about to become their tomb.

Sam walked back through the nave, checking his work. He looked up at the huge vault of the ceiling and the stained glass windows
all around. The building was magnificent. One of the most beautiful, surely, that his firm had ever designed. Its destruction
would be a tragedy that the city would talk about for months.

The explosives were set to detonate by a signal from the electronic device that Sam held in his hand. Now came the
crucial part of the plan. The part for which he needed crazy Jack Fletcher.

It must, of course, be Fletcher who was blamed for the explosion. And since the detonation would have to be triggered from
outside, Fletcher was the only other person besides himself who would leave the building alive.

Once outside, though, the mad bomber, Jehovah’s Pitchfork, would meet with bad luck. A large piece of schrapnel from the blast
would strike him down. He would die with the detonator in his hand.

Giuseppe’s murder would remain unsolved. Vico, dead in the ruins, could remain a suspect. With finesse, Sam would be able
to suggest that Fletcher’s antigay bigotry was the motive for him to kill Giuseppe. Yes, with any luck, it would
all
be blamed on Fletcher.

He went up the sanctuary steps and around behind the altar to the steps that led down to the crypt. Time to get Fletcher out
of the basement.

As soon as she saw Sam duck out of sight behind the high altar, Annie jumped out from behind the statue of St. Joan. “Get
Vico and Matt. Warn them. They’ve got to get out of here instantly. Sam is going to blow up the building.”

“What are you going to do?” Paolina demanded.

“I’m going to try to pull those explosives off the columns,” she said.

“No! Are you out of your mind? Please, Ms. Jefferson, no!”

“Get them out of there, Paolina.
Now!”
she said over her shoulder as she ran to the first column.

These things were supposed to be handled gently, Annie knew. And when it came to explosives, that was just about all she knew.
That and the fact that they were detonated from a distance, electronically.

If Sam was right now leaving the cathedral—which he would have to do before he pushed the button—she had time only to rip
the damn things off a few of the columns and hope that the explosion, when it came, would not take down the entire building.

As she tore the tape off the stone and disengaged the first few sticks of dynamite—or whatever it was—it occurred to her that
she was probably going to die.
No, not probably,
she thought.
Definitely.

But since it was impossible to imagine being definitely dead, she just went right ahead and yanked the explosives off the
pillar and laid them carefully on the nearest wooden pew. Then she ran to the next column and did the same thing.

“They’re upstairs,” Sam said to Fletcher. “Annie and that other girl. I thought you’d like to know.”

“They can’t be upstairs! I’ve got all the ways out of the crawl space blocked!”

“Well,” Sam shrugged, “you must’ve missed something.”

“Shit!” Fletcher cried. “There
is
a way!”

“Are you
crazy?”
Matt had seen madness before—and matchless guts and courage—but he didn’t think he’d ever witnessed anything to match the
sight of Annie Jefferson tearing live explosives off the huge stone columns of a doomed cathedral.

“Get out, get out!”

“Vico’s getting Paolina out, Annie. Come with me! Quickly—before Sam blows the thing.”

“He’s not going to destroy my cathedral, dammit! Not after all our hard work!” She pointed up at the magnificent stained glass
windows, shrouded now in the dark. “He played me for a fool, Matt. It never occurred to me that I couldn’t trust the architect.
Or that he would sabotage his own building—and his most beautiful building at that. Well, he may have killed Giuseppe, but
he’s not going destroy his art!”

“Annie, I know how you feel, but it’s too late.”
How long till it blows? Shit!
How long?

He grabbed her arms and lifted her bodily from the column—the third of six that Sam had wired. “I’m taking you out of here
now. Hell, it’ll be a miracle if we can even get out.”

She sobbed as he pulled her away. The nearest exit was the south transept door, and he ran toward it, dragging her while she
screamed at him to let her go. Vico and Paolina were already there, and Vico was struggling with the door.

“Dammit, Annie, it’s just a
building
for chrissake! I’ve lost everything else—I’m not going to lose you too!”

“I can’t, Matt! I can’t let it happen! We’ve got to stop him!”

“The cathedral can be built again,” he said, wrestling her toward the door.
How long till it blows?
“Life once extinguished is lost forever. I love you, Annie. Stop fighting me.”

She sobbed and went limp against him. Thank God! He swung her into his arms and ran toward Vico, who
still
hadn’t gotten the damn door open.

Just as he skidded up to the teenagers, Sam’s voice rang out behind him:

“Stop right there.”

Again, Barbara Rae woke up suddenly. This time she knew it was hopeless. A peaceful sleep tonight was impossible.

Then she realized that what had awakened her this time was a pounding downstairs on the main door to the youth center.

She struggled into her dressing gown and descended the stairs. Her limbs felt stiff. Age was settling into her bones, slowing
her down.

She expected Annie or Matthew, but it was Darcy at the door. “Thank God you’re here. I didn’t dare call the police because
of Matt and Vico, but maybe I should have. Have you seen Annie and Matthew? They came over here to the cathedral more than
an hour ago.”

“No, I haven’t seen them.”

“Sam’s a killer and Fletcher’s a psycho,” Darcy said. “We’d better call the cops.”

They made the call, then Barbara Rae led Darcy to the basement of the youth center, while Darcy breathlessly filled her in
on what they’d discovered at Sam’s office.

“There’s a way into the cathedral from here,” Barbara Rae explained. “We can get in there before the police can.”

“Good. My instincts are screaming that we’d better get in there fast.”

Despite all the evidence, Matt hadn’t really believed it until now. Even though he had known for several hours that his oldest
friend had betrayed him in the vilest possible manner, he hadn’t permitted himself to feel it in his heart.

Now, though, face to face with his nemesis, looking into the cold, hard barrel of a gun, he finally understood that Sam Brody
had hated him for years.

“This is between you and me,” he said. “Annie’s not part of it. Let her go.”

“Sorry. She wasn’t supposed to be involved, but she just couldn’t leave it alone,” said Sam. “I really am sorry, Annie.” He
looked truly distressed. “It’s never a good idea to get caught in the crossfire between two old adversaries.”

“Is that what happened to Francesca?” Matt demanded.

“What happened to Francesca was, believe it or not, unintended. She was leaving you. I still don’t know what you did to make
her change her mind, but whatever it was, it wouldn’t have lasted. She and I were going to be together, husband and wife,
just as we would have been if you hadn’t seduced her away from me twenty years ago.”

“If that’s true, why did you kill her?”

Sam looked pained. “She phoned me that night after the party. I think she called from a pay phone, which is why no one ever
suspected me. She’d left the yacht to call because she was afraid you’d overhear.

“She told me she wasn’t leaving you after all. We argued. I told her to go back to the yacht and wait for me… I was coming
to pick her up. But when I got there, she wouldn’t leave. She told me then that she was pregnant and the baby was yours. I
didn’t believe her. I thought she was just making excuses again.

“She was hysterical, and it turned—” he shrugged, “violent. She came at me, actually, with those long fingernails of hers
bared, and I knew from long experience how nasty they could be. Don’t try to tell me you haven’t had a taste of that yourself
on occasion. I was in no mood to be mauled, so I hit her. She fell and struck the back of her head on the railing of the yacht.
That’s how she died—or so I thought at the time. She wasn’t breathing. I got no pulse. I thought she was dead and I panicked.
I was
sure
she was dead, so I pushed her body overboard.”

Where she had drowned. Neither of them said it. But it had been proven during the trial that Francesca had been alive when
she went into the water.

Matt was trying very hard to keep his emotions under
control. “That’s not the way a man in love behaves,” he said tightly. “Here’s what I think. I think you wanted Francesca purely
for the pleasure of taking her away from me. But even more than that, you wanted to marry her to get your hands on half of
my fortune. And once that became impossible, you focused on skimming money from the cathedral instead, since that was, indirectly,
a way to steal money that had once belonged to me. A
lot
of money, incidentally.

“You’re not a tragic lover, yearning for the same woman for over twenty years. You’re a greedy, bitter son of a bitch who’s
been nursing a grudge for decades because the kid you felt so superior to in college turned out to be your master in every
way.”

Sam smiled genially. “In every way but one. You’ve never learned the fine art of dissembling, Matt. I’m an infinitely better
actor than you are, and this is a culture that values the performance, the drama, a lot more highly than they value the truth.
And wisely so, because truth is elusive.”

“I would have trusted you with my life! Anything you asked of me, I would have given you.”

“I know.” Sam shook his head. “You always were a sentimental fool, Matthew.” He made a motion with his gun. “Enough chitchat.
Get over there—all of you. Up against that nice column there with the dynamite.” He took a quick look over his shoulder. “Jack?
You still got that rope? Bring it over here.”