M
ASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL WAS
only a few short blocks from the station house, but the ride seemed to last forever. Stone sat in the backseat, his hands gripping each other in his lap as the muscles tensed up and down his arms. He still hadn’t come to grips with the evil he’d confronted only a few hours before.
In the front seat, Kozlowski sat behind the wheel, picking his way through traffic on the busy streets that ran along the back side of Beacon Hill. To him, the arrest of Little Jack was just another minor success in the ongoing struggle to hold back the tidal waters of depravity that were a constant force in life. He’d long ago given up any notion of “winning” the war against crime, opting instead to take solace in small victories.
Flaherty sat in the passenger seat, looking out the windows at nothing in particular. She was focused inward, watching a reel of regrets and calculations play out on the screen in her mind. This was a significant moment in her career, she knew. She’d been given the lead role in catching the most notorious murderer in Boston in the past thirty years, and she’d succeeded. Never mind that the success had precious little to do with her leadership, and was more the result of a wild rookie hunch combined with a search and seizure that was probably illegal. That wouldn’t matter, she knew. She’d get the lion’s share of the credit. Those ahead of her in the political pecking order—Weidel, the commissioner, the mayor, the governor— would each take their slice of recognition off the top, but her reputation was now guaranteed.
Why then did she feel empty—like an impostor living off lies and waiting to be unmasked? To her, the Caldwell case was still unsolved, and this latest revelation about Scott Finn had hit her like a baseball bat in the chest. She’d spent time with him and liked him. Hell, she’d kissed him. How could she have misjudged his character so badly?
For all her doubts about the Caldwell case, there was still a part of her that wanted to leave it all alone. Everyone in the city would be happy to lay the blame for the murders—including Caldwell’s—at the foot of the monster who’d been caught in the act of torture; torture so unspeakable that rational explanation could be overlooked. No one needed any more mystery in this case, she knew. She could let the whole thing drop and simply walk away from Finn, and no one would ever know about their dinner together, or the kiss.
She couldn’t do it, though. She had too many questions, and she was about to meet the one person who might be able to give her some of the answers.
They already had a working biography of Little Jack from the ten hours of investigation that had been conducted at his house. His name was John Townsend. The press would be thrilled that they could keep using “Jack” as the murderer’s name, Flaherty thought. He was a thirty-three-year-old lab technician who worked at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He’d attended Tufts Medical School for two years in the late 1990s, but had dropped out after his parents died in a car crash that had left him with a broken arm. The house in which he lived— the house where he was caught—had been his parents’, and he’d inherited it after the accident.
All of this information, Flaherty knew, only provided the most basic outline of who Jack Townsend really was. It might be that they’d never know more. He might clam up and refuse to talk, and watch as the police and the “experts” and the public searched for some explanation to hold on to—something they could all make sense of.
But then again, he might let them in. That was what Flaherty was hoping. She was praying he’d be the type of criminal who wanted people to understand him, or at least what he thought he was. That way, she might find out more about the other heinous things he had done. And she might get her answer about Natalie Caldwell.
These were her hopes as Flaherty stepped out of the car at Mass General and walked toward the entrance. Through the lobby and down a long corridor to the right was the Medical Detention Center, which treated patients who needed to be restrained for one reason or another. As she walked down the corridor toward John Townsend’s room, she had the distinct premonition that the surreal journey she’d begun a few months before was nowhere close to ending.
H
E LOOKED SO FRAIL.
That was the overriding impression Flaherty had of Townsend. It almost made her laugh, but she reminded herself of what he’d done, and the humor faded. He was sitting upright quietly in his bed. His hospital gown was pulled off the shoulder where bandages covered the bullet wounds Stone had inflicted. His arms were at his sides, both attached by handcuffs at the wrists to the railings on the sides of the bed. The flop of sandy hair that he normally brushed forward was askew and stuck up from the top of his head like a rooster’s comb, revealing a shiny bald pate. He looked so calm and harmless as they opened the door that they thought they might have the wrong room.
He turned as they walked in, looking at each of them for a long moment before moving on. His expression didn’t change until he came to Stone. Then the slightest flicker of recognition flashed in his eyes, followed by a simple nod of his head, as though in respect.
“Mr. Townsend,” Flaherty began.
“John,” he said. “I prefer to be called John.”
“My name is Lieutenant Flaherty, John. This is my partner, Detective Kozlowski, and this is Officer Stone.”
“Yes, Officer Stone and I have met, haven’t we?” He looked at Stone with a placid smile. Stone shifted his feet uncomfortably and looked away. “We were never properly introduced, but it was Officer Stone who gave me this, I believe,” he said, nodding downward toward his shoulder.
“Yes, it was,” Flaherty said. Her voice was calm and reassuring. She’d instructed both Kozlowski and Stone not to speak unless she told them to. She’d undergone training in criminal psychology, and she knew that a confrontational tone was considered less effective than a sympathetic one in getting information out of a psychopath. That was what they were here for, she’d explained to Stone: information. The District Attorney’s office would have to handle punishment.
“He didn’t have many options at the time,” she pointed out.
“Oh, I don’t blame him,” Townsend said. “He was only doing God’s will. He could have done nothing else.”
“Before we continue, John, I want to make sure you understand that you don’t have to talk to us. Has someone read you your rights?”
“Yes, they have.”
“So you understand that you don’t have to say anything to us? And you’re aware that, even if you want to talk to us, you have the right to have an attorney here with you? You understand these rights?”
“Rights are things that man invented so he could usurp God’s role in the universe. I have no rights other than those given by God.”
“But you understand that, legally speaking, you have these rights under the judicial system, right?”
“I don’t mind talking to you, Lieutenant Flaherty.”
It was the closest she was going to get to an explicit waiver of his constitutional protections, and Flaherty decided it was going to have to do. She wasn’t going to keep pushing him until he got himself a lawyer. She was determined to press forward.
“John, we want to talk to you about the women you killed,” she started.
“You mean the whores,” he corrected.
“Is that why you killed them, John? Because they were whores?”
“That’s why God killed them.”
“But you were the one who actually killed them, John, not God.”
“God was acting through me.”
“Why would God want you to kill these women? Can you explain that to us so we can understand?”
“I can’t explain it. But God can.” Townsend closed his eyes and leaned back his head. He was the picture of contentment, Flaherty thought. And then he began to speak. His voice was slow and clear as he made his way through the recitation.
After this I heard what sounded like the roar of a great
multitude in heaven, shouting:
“Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our
God,
for true and just are His judgments.
He has condemned the great whore
who corrupted the earth by her adulteries.
He has avenged on her the blood of His servants.”
And again they shouted,
“Hallelujah! The smoke goes up from her forever.”
He stopped speaking and looked at the three police officers as if he’d explained everything and no more needed to be said.
“What is that from?” Flaherty asked.
Townsend’s eyes grew wide in horror at the question. “It’s from the word of the Lord, the giver of life and death everlasting, from the book of Revelation, chapter nineteen. Don’t you see, Lieutenant Flaherty? It’s all made so clear for us, if we’d only listen.”
The room was silent for a moment as Flaherty just stared back at Townsend, wondering what to say next. “So this was a religious act?” she asked at last.
“It was preordained by God. It was seen by me in prophecy.”
Flaherty was struggling to remember her Bible scripture. It had been drilled into her as a schoolgirl by the nuns who were always eager to point out the sin they saw in young women. But it had been more than a decade since she’d been to church. It was coming back to her in dribs and drabs only.
“But didn’t the words of the prophecy also tell us that God is the ultimate judge, and that it’s not our place to take His justice into our hands?” she asked. It was one of the few things she remembered as making sense to her as a child, and she felt like it was the best ammunition she had to keep the conversation going.
Townsend nodded approvingly. “Yes, but we’re also warned not to tolerate the whores of the world.” He closed his eyes and began reading once again from the scripture in his head.
I have this against you:
You tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a
prophetess.
By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual
immorality
and the eating of foods sacrificed to idols.
I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but
she is unwilling.
So I will cast her on a fire of suffering,
and I will make those who commit adultery with her
suffer intensely.
They were dealing with a real psychopath, that much was obvious. Either that or he was a brilliant actor setting up an insanity defense, but Flaherty didn’t think so. The words from the Bible rolled off his tongue freely; not like they’d been memorized as part of an act, but like they’d become part of him—as familiar to him as his own name. Flaherty noticed the look in Townsend’s eyes and knew it would disturb her sleep for months. His eyes were narrow and intense and appeared ready to consume the world with their anger.
“But isn’t it God’s choice to take His revenge, not yours?” Flaherty asked, still fishing.
Townsend paused. He seemed unsettled by this suggestion, and his hands tugged involuntarily at the handcuffs, making them clink against the bed railings. His eyes went down for a moment, searching for an answer. Then the clinking stopped and he looked back at Flaherty. “God works through me,” he said.
The answer seemed to calm him a little bit, but Flaherty could still feel the tension in him—an element of doubt that hadn’t been there before. His posture had changed, and he now sat straight up in his bed, as if he were consciously keeping himself on guard.
“But if God works through you, why would He let us catch you?” she asked. “Why wouldn’t you be permitted to go on killing?”
Townsend shook his head back and forth and smiled smugly, as if he’d been expecting that question and was ready with an answer. “That wasn’t God’s will! I’ve completed my task for God and cleared the way for the dawning of a new eternity. It was seven that He wanted, to make way for the seven angels of the apocalypse.
The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right
hand
,
and of the seven golden lampstands is this:
The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches,
and the seven lampstands are the seven churches!
“It’s the seven angels and the seven plagues and the seven bowls of God’s wrath that portend the coming of the riders of the apocalypse. For the seven angels to be reborn from the dead on earth, they must take the place of the living. That’s what God needed of me. Even I didn’t know the purpose of my actions, but it was God all along. He guided my hands. He brought Officer Stone to my house at the moment that the task was complete. We are all a part of the greatest moment in mankind’s existence, and we should rejoice! The age of darkness is upon us, and the righteous shall emerge into the light! The seven bowls of the Lord’s wrath are upon us, and the dead shall rise to be judged!”
Townsend’s sermon was gathering speed as he reveled in epiphanies only he could see. Flaherty had to calm him down.
“But John, you didn’t kill seven women, you killed eight,” she said.
At this, Townsend began shaking his head violently, thrashing his body back and forth in denial. His wrists pulled at the handcuffs, and Flaherty could see the edges of the restraints cutting into his skin, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy throwing himself from side to side as his voice grew louder.
“The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘It is done!’”
Flaherty pulled out a picture of Natalie Caldwell. It was taken before the autopsy was conducted, and showed her head framed by the corners of the steel cutting table. The light from the surgical lamp gave her face an eerie glow, but the picture was clear and recognizable. Flaherty held it in front of Townsend’s face, moving it back and forth so he could see it as he thrashed around.
“Did you kill this woman?” she yelled, trying to break through the trance Townsend had worked himself into.
“The seventh angel poured out his bowl …”
Townsend’s wrists were bleeding now, as the handcuffs cut through his flesh. On his shoulder, the bandages that covered the gunshot wound had turned deep crimson as the stitches pulled away at the edges and the bleeding began in earnest.
“Did you kill this woman, John?” she yelled again, putting her face down close to his in an attempt to be heard through his rant.
“… into the air, and out of the temple …”
“You killed her, didn’t you, John?” she screamed.
“… came a loud voice from the throne saying it was done …”
“Did you kill her?” Flaherty’s fury was now approaching Townsend’s, and Stone shot a look at Kozlowski. The older cop ignored him, focusing on the reaction Townsend was having.
Suddenly, Townsend seized. He started choking and throwing his head back against the bed. Blood was pouring from his shoulder, and the sheets near his wrists were stained red. Several buzzers attached to body monitors screamed, and his eyes rolled up into his head so that only the whites of his eyeballs were visible.
A nurse came rushing into the room. “What did you do to him?” she screamed as she hurried over to the bed and started checking various different readouts. “Code blue! Code blue!” she shouted into an intercom. Then she leaned over and pressed down on Townsend’s chest, lodging her shoulder under his chin to keep him from biting off his tongue.
Kozlowski was tugging at Flaherty’s elbow. “Come on, partner, let’s get out of here. There’s not much we’re going to get out of him for the rest of today.” He led her through the door as several doctors and nurses rushed in with a crash cart.
“Did you hear him?” Flaherty asked in a daze as they headed out.
“Yeah, I heard him,” Kozlowski replied.
“Only seven. Not eight, only seven.”
“Yeah,” Kozlowski said, nodding.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.
“Caldwell,” he said simply.
She nodded. “Caldwell.”