Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney #2)(87)
He zoomed in again.
And again.
Only on the third time were the seams of the wig visible. Or the tiny bumps in the latex where the prosthetic nose had been molded to the cheeks. Even with a trained eye and a state-of-the-art computer, Jean had to look so closely he felt like his eyes might cross. But once he saw, he knew.
That’s no accomplice.
THE MAN IN THE green jacket was back at his hotel. The Casas de la Judería was a strange mishmash of rooms and courtyards linked by subterranean tunnels in the old Jewish quarter of Seville. Wedged between two churches and set back from a pretty but dark cobblestone street lined with cafés and precariously leaning medieval houses, it was a throwback to an old, largely lost Spain. The interiors were gloomy and musty, with a preponderance of dark brown fabric, permanently drawn curtains and heavy mahogany furniture. A smell of beeswax polish mingled with wood smoke and incense from the church next door. The decor was simple, the rooms small. There were no televisions or other signs of the modern world beyond the beautifully carved, heavy wooden gates at the hotel’s entrance. In the courtyards, old men smoked pipes and sipped coffee and read novels by Ignacio Aldecoa. A widow in a black-fringed head scarf, frozen in time, said the rosary by an unlit fire in the salon.
Returning to his room, the man in the green parka locked the door. Then he removed his coat, socks and shoes and sat down on the end of the bed. He tried not to think about the countless generations of Jews who had slept in this room before him. The man did not like Jews. It was the Jews who had crucified Our Lord.
He had chosen this hotel because it was central and private and reasonably priced. But the irony of sleeping in a former Jewish ghetto did not escape him. Feeling dirty and full of sin, he stripped fully and ran himself a boiling-hot bath. Removing his false nose and the latex that made his forehead more prominent was time-consuming and painful, but he carried out the process without complaint. He deserved the pain. Relished it, even.
He stepped into the cramped bathtub. The water burned his skin, scalding his scrotum as he sat down, immersing his legs fully.
Daniel Cooper sighed with pleasure.
DANIEL JAMES COOPER HAD committed his first murder at the age of twelve.
The victim was his own mother.
Daniel had stabbed Eleanor Cooper to death in a fit of rage over her affair with a neighbor, Fred Zimmer. Zimmer was convicted of the crime and ultimately executed, largely thanks to young Daniel’s poignant testimony, which reduced more than one juror to tears. Daniel was placed in the care of an aunt, who often heard the boy scream himself to sleep at night. Daniel Cooper had loved his mother.
But Daniel Cooper’s mother was a whore.
Daniel believed in hell. He knew that his only hope of salvation was to atone for his past sins, for his mother’s death and Zimmer’s. Atonement was what he had spent most of his adult life trying to achieve, in one way or another.
Now, here in Seville, at last everything was falling into place.
Tracy would come to him now. With Jeff Stevens as bait, she’d be drawn like a moth to a flame. Inspired by the Holy Shroud, as so many pilgrims had been before him, Daniel Cooper would finally be able to complete his life’s work, the penance that the Lord had prescribed for him. With this one, final sacrifice, he would atone for his mother’s death. Then he would save Tracy Whitney’s soul, and his own, through the sanctity of marriage.
Daniel Cooper’s beloved mother had died in a bathtub.
Reaching under the water, Daniel started to masturbate.
Soon it would be time to go.
EL IGLESIA DE SAN Buenaventura was a hidden treasure. Tucked away in an obscure alleyway, Calle Carlos Ca?al, its simple, understated wooden doors belied the utterly sumptuous splendor within.
It was late at night and both the church and the alley were deserted, but a dim light burned constantly above the altar, a gleaming slab of gold that would not have been out of place in a Roman emperor’s palace. Jeff Stevens gasped. There must be millions of dollars’ worth of art in this tiny church alone, one of scores scattered throughout the city. Ornate carvings in ivory and marble competed with burnished gold statuary and stunning medieval frescoes to capture worshippers’ attention—although their true purpose was, of course, to glorify God.
Jeff thought, I could be a believer in a place like this. Inhaling the lingering scents of incense, candle wax and wood polish, he remembered the dour, Presbyterian chapels of his upbringing in Marion, Ohio, all whitewashed walls and simple crosses and foul, orange 1970s carpeting. No wonder I’m an atheist.
“Hello?”
His voice echoed around the empty church. The air was so cold he could see his breath.
“Cooper?” he called again. “I’m alone.”
No answer. Jeff checked his watch. It was a few minutes after eleven. The Daniel Cooper Jeff remembered was a stickler for punctuality. He wouldn’t have left already, would he? No. That made no sense. It was Cooper who’d requested the meeting. Cooper who felt he had something to say, who wanted to make some sort of deal.
Jeff knelt down in one of the back pews and gazed up at the ceiling, drinking in the beauty and majesty of the place. He’d been nervous on his way over, apprehensive about seeing Daniel Cooper face-to-face after all these years. But now that he was here, alone, he felt a profound sense of peace.
He was turning to admire a statue of Saint Peter when the blow came. It was so sudden, so utterly unexpected, Jeff didn’t even register it as pain. The cold metal smashed into the back of his skull with an audible crack, like a breaking egg. Jeff slumped forward, momentarily aware of something warm and sticky running down his neck.