Jack blinked at her. “You killed him?”
She nodded. “He was standing in my bedroom while I was asleep. He was watching me. I woke up. My gun was gone off the nightstand, so I ran.”
“Ran where?”
She flicked a hand back over her left shoulder. “Up Grandfather Mountain.”
Jack instinctively glanced in that direction even though there were no windows to see the mountain.
“And he followed you?”
“Yes. So I killed him.”
“Are you sure he’s dead? I mean, are you positive?”
She turned around, leaned back, lifted one of those disposable, milky, semitransparent plastic bowls that were used for leftover casseroles and such, and set it down between them.
“This is his brain.”
Jack was momentarily stupefied. The smell told him why she had lit scented candles. The brain was lopsided, as if it had been partially crushed.
“Why in the world do you have his brain?”
She looked genuinely puzzled by the question. “I thought that maybe you would want to run DNA tests or something. He’s an international serial killer. I thought that a lot of people in other countries would want confirmation that it was him and that he was dead. I thought relatives would want the closure of knowing that the man who killed their family members was dead. I figured that if I only saved some blood, people could worry that he was still alive. So, I saved his brain for you, for proof.”
Jack’s jaw was hanging. Her cold, calm logic left him stunned. He stared down at the bloody brain in the plastic bowl. He finally found his voice.
“What happened? How did he die?”
“I bashed in his skull with a rock.”
“Oh. Well, that would do it.”
All kinds of questions were flying around in his head. But in the uncomfortable silence he wanted most to comfort her after such a violent ordeal. “I suppose you know that Angela means ‘angel’ in Italian.” She nodded. “Well, ‘angel’ means ‘messenger from God.’ So, I guess you were God’s messenger with Cassiel.”
“Not exactly. It may mean ‘messenger of God’ ordinarily, but it means something different in my case.”
Jack squinted a bit. “What does it mean in your case?”
“ ‘Wrath of God.’ ”
He could only stare at her. From everything he knew about her, and the things he suspected, he thought that maybe she had it right.
“If you don’t want his brain,” she said, “I’d be happy to get rid of it.”
Jack was dying of curiosity as to where the rest of him was, and how she had come to have only his brain, but he could tell that she had not called him to discuss the disposal of bodies.
“Did something else happen, Angela?”
She nodded. “Something really creepy.”
“Really creepy.” He tried to imagine something more creepy than having the man’s brain in a plastic bowl, but couldn’t, so he asked. “Like what?”
“Well, you know the way I could tell you all sorts of things about Cassiel when you showed me that photo?”
“Yes. I believe it’s because of your genetic makeup. Because of that, you somehow had visions of the things he did.”
“That happens with any killer,” she said. “You think it’s genetic, but I know I’m not normal. I know I’m a freak. But now I think that I may be an even bigger freak than I ever thought.”
“You’re not a freak, Angela,” he insisted, softly.
“I think maybe I have those visions because I’m meant to be here for something bigger than me. You know? I think that, in a way, I’m here to be the wrath of God.”
Jack didn’t want her to think of herself as a freak. He knew she wasn’t. She was something quite extraordinary.
“If it’s any comfort, I know other people with some of your ability, and I know of another woman, Kate, who could do things similar to what you can do. She can tell things from looking into a killer’s eyes, too.”
“Really?” She sounded hopeful.
“Yes, but nothing like you can,” he admitted.
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Well, anyway, after I split Cassiel’s skull open with a rock, I tore his brain away from the spinal cord and held it in my hands.”
Jack wondered why on earth she would do that, but he didn’t ask. “Go on.”
“As I was holding his brain in my hands, his memories were still firing. There was still some kind of electrical activity, or something, still functioning. I saw all kinds of things in my own mind that he’d seen recently. They were his memories.”
“Angela, I don’t think that’s possible. I mean, he was dead. You just said you’d split his skull open with a rock.”
“That’s just what I thought. But when I was holding his brain, still warm in my hands, I could see his thoughts. I don’t know how I could, but I could. Without a blood supply, his brain was rapidly dying—I could feel it happening—but it was still viable enough to have some rudimentary, primitive function.
“His brain was racing through recent memories. I could see them.”
Jack decided that rather than express doubt or offer alternate explanations he would keep it simple and let her explain her experience. He thought that after she had killed the man in such a horrific fashion it would be cathartic for her if he just listened and let her talk.
“Like what? What did you see?”
“I saw where he parked the car he stole to get here. It’s about a mile away. I could take you to it. It’s blue. I could see his memories of walking through the fields and then the woods to get to my house. I saw the memory of him using his knife to get in the back door. I saw his memory of using a little flashlight to look down at me in bed while I was asleep. I only had on panties. I saw his memory of getting an erection as he considered the things he was going to do to me.”
“How long did this go on—these memories?”
“Not long at all. They were going past a mile a minute—thousands upon thousands of them in little snippets. In my mind I could see them all, as if they were my own memories, my own thoughts, the way you can remember an entire event—sights, sounds, smells, people, conversations—all together in an instant. That’s what this was like. They were also fading away.
“I saw his brain die and his soul wink out of existence.”
“Okay,” Jack said as he let out a deep breath, “that is pretty creepy.”
Jack still didn’t know if what she described had really happened, or if it was merely her own mind dealing with the disorienting mix of rage, grief, and the enormity of killing a man with her bare hands. He also didn’t know why she needed to tell him this at five in the morning, before the sun was up.
“Angela, is there something about those memories that was particularly disturbing? Something you needed to tell me?”
A sudden tear ran down her cheek. She wiped it away.
“Yes. Later today—this afternoon—a lot of people are going to die. A lot of awful people.”
“What are you talking about? What people?”
Angela stared down at the brain.
“That growing nest of people in the powerful and corrupt ruling class. The arrogant people in the ivory towers who think they’re better than all the rest of us.” Her voice sounded bitter. “The people who make the laws to rule over everyone else, to control everyone else, but don’t have to follow those laws themselves because they’re above the law.
“I think the world would be better off without them.
“For a time, I thought about how fitting that would be—letting all those greedy, corrupt, lying, cruel, crooked, evil people wink out of existence. I thought it would be so good to let that happen.”
She looked up at him, her eyes beginning to well up. Tears overflowed to run down her cheeks. He didn’t know what she was talking about, but decided to let her explain it her way.
“I can imagine it happening, kind of like I can see killers murdering people. I can see the totality of it. It’s spellbinding, like watching a car sliding into a train, and knowing that the people you can see in that car are about to die…. and not caring.