But the other two men kept talking, a minute or more, with Maris frozen out and Kevin dead and me just waiting, until Cook pulled back and stood up. “All right?”
Barton rose also, laid Kevin’s head down gently, and rose slowly, too, saying “Yes” again and again, and I saw how pleased Cook was with himself that he had made this sale, whatever it was. Even as the arrogant priest swooped in to seize his idea, swoop in and take it over: Mockingbird mentality. “Here is what we are going to do.” His voice was steady now, steely. The murmuring priest was gone, the fiery preacher was gone; here now was the field commander, leader of men, decisive and determined. “You will go and make these arrangements,” he said to Cook. “But first you need to deal with the body. Do you have a way to handle it?”
“Yeah,” said Cook. “I do.” He looked down at Kevin, and so did I, and we saw the water wash over the boy’s face, his eyes staring up at the sun.
Barton next addressed Mr. Maris. “You will take the government man to the place and wait. Do you understand me? You are to wait.” The priest did not wait for Maris’s answer. He turned and walked up the slope to the road, water dripping from the fringes of his cassock. “Now,” he said. “It is Sunday. I’m going to Mass.”
Maris did as he was told.
He drove me to Saint Anselm’s Catholic Promise, where I had been before, and we sat in that dusty main room, in the circle of fold-up chairs.
We listened to church bells ringing, listened to the boastful revving of motorcycle engines, listened to the rattle and thump of hip-hop bass lines coming out of SUVs on Central Avenue. I longed for a radio, longed to ask my captor if he might put on something to pass the time. Something sweet and easy. Some Smokey Robinson; some MJ. But there was no engaging Mr. Maris. He sat across from me with his legs spread wide, staring at me evenly, a shotgun between his legs. I sat woozy while my shoulder burned and bled. My hands were tied together behind the back of the chair. I was offered no first aid, no water.
“Were it me,” said Maris at one point, very softly, still staring, “I would make it hard for you. Slow. Do you understand my meaning?”
I didn’t answer him. I was thinking about Kevin.
Thinking about his old neighborhood: Brightmoor, in Detroit.
Thinking about his parents: Charles and Chandra.
Thinking about what he had done, what he had tried to do, and how he had died. I yearned for music, to separate me from these thoughts.
“Were it me,” said Maris, “it would not be pleasant. Do you understand?”
Still I said nothing. Maris was not done. He scraped his chair out of the circle, moved it closer to mine, keeping the shotgun between his legs. I considered ways I might have disarmed him, even with my hands tied to the chair as they were. Things I had learned.
“How many has it been? How many have you brought in, in your hunt? How many?”
When still I said nothing, Maris flared his nostrils, narrowed his gaze.
“You do not even know. Is that it? More than you can count? More than you think of?”
Two hundred ten. I could have told him if I wanted to. Two hundred ten since Chicago, since Bridge in the basement of the federal building, since my training in the Arizona desert. Two hundred ten, including this most recent: Jackdaw. Kevin. Son of Charles and Chandra.
Kevin of the Brightmoor section of Detroit, Michigan.
I held my hands and felt the blood creep out of my shoulder.
It was nearly nightfall before the door of that old abandoned community center creaked open and Barton came in, with Cook behind him.
Barton, out of clerical costume and in jeans and a shirt, carried a laptop under one arm. Cook leaned against the wall and chewed his gum while Barton pulled a chair out of the circle and dragged it by the back until he was sitting across from me.
He opened the laptop and turned it so I could see the screen. Maris stayed where he was, the shotgun balanced across his knees.
Barton clicked on a familiar icon, and a map opened up on his screen. The map showed the world, then it zoomed in, a sickening, rapid descent, until it showed the United States, then Indiana, then the city. There was a red dot, midcity, and it flashed on and off, on and off.
“Do you know what that is?” said the priest.
“I do.”
“Tell me what it is.”
I stared at the dot. I was transfixed. “It’s me.”
“Correct.” He shut the computer and stood up. “It’s you.”
“How is this possible?” I said, as if that mattered. As if that were the important thing. I was trying to figure out what was happening here—what was next.
“As you know, this man is a law enforcement officer. There are certain channels to which he has access.”