Relentless

For a while, expect the worst and make yourself mean enough to deal with it.”
    I nodded, put up the window, and reversed into the rain once more.
    In the garage, Vivian waved at us until I shifted into drive and sped away.

   By the time we returned to St. Gaetano’s, vespers must have concluded more than an hour earlier.
    I worried that even as early as seven-thirty, the church might be locked. The benign days when houses of worship could be open around the clock without being vandalized were as far in the past as bell-bottom blue jeans, tie-dyed shirts, and psychedelic hats.
    I dropped Penny near the front entrance. The rain suddenly intensified as she climbed the steps and tried the door. Unlocked.
    As she went inside, I drove to the serviceway behind the church, parked but left the engine running. I got out, raised the tailgate.
    The sacristy door opened. Penny braced it with a suitcase.
    I went inside, and she said, “Somebody’s in the choir storage room off the narthex. The door was open. I think it was Father Tom.”
    My note was where I had left it. Together, Penny and I quickly moved our belongings from the sacristy closet to the Mountaineer.
    If I could avoid Father Tom, so much the better. Because I did not want to endanger him and also did not want to spend half an hour explaining the glimpse of Hell that our day had been, whatever story I told him would have to be at least incomplete if not a string of lies. I loathed having to lie to a priest, considering that by my calculation, I already was scheduled for 704 years in Purgatory.
    When all the luggage was loaded in the SUV, I decided against testing our luck by blotting the rainwater from the sacristy floor, as I had done previously. I pulled the door shut, and we drove away.
    Our destination was Boom World, as we called Grimbald and Clotilda’s property, and our route from the church took us past Beddlington Promenade, the dark and deteriorating shopping center where earlier we abandoned our Explorer.
    As we drove by, we had no difficulty seeing the SUV under the skeletal branches of the dead trees. It was illuminated by the headlights of the black Cadillac Escalade parked in front of it.
    Penny said, “Didn’t you tell me Waxx drove a black—”
    “Yeah.”
    “Don’t draw attention. Don’t slow down.”
    “I’m not slowing down.”
    “Don’t speed up.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Don’t hit anything.”
    “What about that red Honda?”
    “What red Honda?”
    “In the next lane.”
    “What about it?”
    “Can I hit that?”
    “Don’t make me nuts, Cubby.”
    “It’s harder to avoid being blithe than I thought it would be.”
    “Do you think he saw us?” she worried.
    “No chance. He doesn’t know what we’re driving. And the rain. And there’s a lot of traffic. We’re just another fish in the school.”
    My personal cell phone rang, not the disposable.
    Thinking
John Clitherow
, driving one-handed, risking a collision involving so many cars that it would set a world record, I fumbled the phone out of a raincoat pocket and took the call.
    Shearman Waxx said, “Hack.”
    I heard myself saying, “Hoity-toity snob.”
    Disconcerted, he said, “Who is this?”
    “Who do you think it is, you enema?”
    “You think you’re very cute.”
    “Actually, I have ugly feet.”
    “Already I found your SUV. Soon I will find you.”
    “Let’s meet for lunch tomorrow.”
    “And I will cut out your boy’s beating heart.”
    I didn’t have a snappy comeback for that one.
    “I will feed his heart, dripping, to your wife.”
    “Lousy syntax,” I said lamely.
    “Then I will, while you watch, cut out her heart.”
    Again, a perfect bon mot eluded me.
    “And I will feed it to you.”
    He terminated the call.
    I returned the phone to my pocket. I drove carefully with both hands, glad to have something to grip that would prevent them from trembling uncontrollably. After a moment, I glanced at Penny.
    To the best of my recollection, I never before saw the whites of her eyes exposed all the way around her dazzling blue irises.
    She said, “Hoity-toity snob? That was
him
?”
    “It pretty much sounded like him.”
    “He saw us. He knows what we’re driving now.”
    “No. The timing was coincidental.”
    “Then why did he call?”
    “The usual ragging you get from a psychopathic killer.”
    “Ragging?”
    “You know—all the gross stuff he’s going to do to us.”
    After a hesitation, she said, “What gross