The Big Bad Wolf (Alex Cross 9)

Chapter 44

BENJAMIN COFFEY WAS being held in a dark root cellar under th

e barn where he’d been brought—what was it now—three, maybe four days ago? Benjamin couldn’t remember exactly, couldn’t keep track of the days.

The Providence College student had nearly lost his mind until he made an amazing discovery in the solitary confinement of the cellar. He found God, or maybe God found him.

The first and most startling thing Benjamin felt was God’s presence. God accepted him, and maybe it was time for him to accept God. He learned that God understood him. But why couldn’t he understand the first thing about God? It didn’t make sense to Benjamin, who’d attended Catholic schools from kindergarten up to his senior year at Providence, where he studied philosophy and also art history. Benjamin had come to another conclusion in the darkness of his “prison cell” under the barn. He’d always thought that he was basically a good person, but now he knew that he wasn’t; and it didn’t have anything to do with his sexuality, as his hypocritical church would have him think. The way he figured it, a bad person was someone who habitually caused harm to others. Benjamin was guilty of that by his treatment of his parents and siblings, his classmates, his lovers, even his so-called best friends. He was mean-spirited, always acted superior, and continually inflicted unnecessary pain. He had acted like this ever since he could remember. He was cruel, a snob, a martinet, a sadist, a complete piece of shit. He’d always justified his bad behavior, because other people had caused him so much pain.

So was that why things had turned out like this? Maybe. But what was truly astonishing to Benjamin was the realization that if he ever got out of this alive, he probably wouldn’t change. In fact, he believed he would use this experience as an excuse to continue being a miserable bastard for the rest of his life. Cold, cold, I’m so cold, he thought. But God loves me unconditionally. That never changes either. Then Benjamin realized that he was incredibly confused, and crying, and had been for a long time, at least a day. He was shivering, babbling nonsense to himself, and he didn’t know what he really thought about anything. Not anymore, he didn’t.

His mind kept shifting back and forth. He did have good friends, great friends, and he’d been an okay son; so why were all these terrible thoughts shuttling through his head? Because he was in hell? Was that it? Hell was this foul-smelling, claustrophobic root cellar under a decaying barn somewhere in New England, probably New Hampshire or Vermont. Was that right?

Maybe he was supposed to repent and couldn’t be set free until he did? Or maybe this was it—for eternity.

He remembered something from Catholic grade school in Great Barrington, Rhode Island. A parish priest had tried to explain an eternity in hell to Benjamin’s sixth-grade class. “Picture a river with a mountain on the other side,” the priest had said. “Now imagine that every thousand years the tiniest sparrow transports what it can carry in its beak across the river from the mountain. When that tiny sparrow has transported the entire mountain to this side of the river, that, boys and girls, would just be the beginning of eternity.” But Benjamin didn’t really believe the priest’s little fable, did he? Fire and brimstone forever? Somebody would find him soon. Somebody would guide him out.

Unfortunately, he didn’t completely believe that either. How could anyone find him here? They wouldn’t. God, the police had lucked out finding the Washington sniper, and Malvo and Muhammad weren’t very smart. Mr. Potter was.

He had to stop crying soon, because Potter was angry with him already. He’d threatened to kill him if he didn’t stop, and, oh, God, that was why he was crying so hard now. He didn’t want to die, not when he was just twenty-one and had his whole life ahead of him.

An hour later? two hours? three? he heard a loud noise above him and began to cry again. Now Benjamin couldn’t stop sobbing, shaking all over. He was sniveling too. He’d sniffed and sniveled since preschool. Stop sniveling, Benjamin. Stop it! Stop it! But he couldn’t stop.

Then the trapdoor opened! Someone was coming down.

Stop the crying, stop the crying, stop it! Stop it this instant! Potter will kill you.

Then the most unbelievable thing happened, a turn of events that Benjamin would have never expected.

He heard a deep voice—not Potter’s.

“Benjamin Coffey? Benjamin? This is the FBI. Mr. Coffey, are you down there? This is the FBI.”

He was shaking worse now, and sobbing so hard he thought he might choke behind the gag. Because of the gag, he couldn’t call out, couldn’t let the FBI somehow know that he was down here.

The FBI found me! It’s a miracle. I have to signal them. But how? Don’t leave! I’m down here! I’m right here!

A flashlight illuminated his face.

He could see a person behind the light. A silhouette. Then the full face peered out of the shadows.

Mr. Potter was frowning down at him from the trapdoor. Then he stuck out his tongue. “I told you what was going to happen. Didn’t I tell you, Benjamin? You did this to yourself. And you’re so beautiful. God, you’re perfect in every other way.”

His tormentor came down the stairs. He saw a battered sledgehammer in Potter’s hand. A heavy farm tool. Waves of fear washed over Benjamin. “I’m a lot stronger than I look,” Potter said. “And you’ve been a very bad boy.”

Chapter 45

MR. POTTER’S REAL NAME was Homer O. Taylor, and he was an assistant professor in the English department at Dartmouth. Brilliant, to be sure, but still an assistant, a nobody. His office was a small but cozy one in the turret at the northwest corner of the Liberal Arts building. He called it his “garret,” the place where a nobody would labor in lonely solitude.

He had been up there most of the afternoon with the door locked, and he was fidgeting. He was also grieving for his beautiful dead boy, his latest tragic love—his third!

Part of Homer Taylor wanted to hurry back to the barn at the farm in Webster to be with Benjamin, just to watch over the body for a few more hours. His Toyota 4Runner was parked outside, and he could be there in an hour if he pushed it. Benjamin, dear boy, why couldn’t you have been good? Why did you bring out the worst in me when there was so much to love?

Benjamin had been such a beauty, and the loss that Taylor felt now was horrifying. And not only the physical and emotional drain, there was the great financial loss. Five years ago, he’d inherited a little over two million dollars. It was going too fast. Much too fast. He couldn’t afford to play like this—but how could he ever stop now?

He wanted another boy already. He needed to be loved. And to love someone. Another Benjamin, only not an emotional wreck, as the poor boy had been.

So he stayed in his office for the entire day to avoid an excruciating hour-long tutorial at four o’clock. He pretended to be marking term papers, in case someone knocked, but he never looked at a single page.