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 Cañal, 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.
And then there was nothing.
WHEN JEAN RIZZO WAS trying to track down Tracy Whitney, back in L.A. after the Brookstein job, he’d physically gone from hotel to hotel. There was no time for that now. Instead, the moment Jean recognized the man in the museum’s photographs as Daniel Cooper, he began e-mailing and faxing Cooper’s disguised image all over Seville.
There were over a hundred hotels in the city and countless guesthouses and B&Bs. Jean knew from Elizabeth Kennedy that Cooper was both practical and cheap. That meant he’d probably chosen to stay somewhere close to the museum, but nowhere too expensive or flashy. The Alfonso was out, as were the real dives on the outskirts of the city. Using Google and the tourist map of the city center that his own hotel had provided, Jean narrowed his “hit list” to ten establishments.
I’ll try them first. Then I’ll move farther out, street by street, mile by mile.
I’ll find him.
I have to.
Not even Jean expected to hit the jackpot so soon, however. On only his third follow-up call, to a small hotel in the Jewish quarter, the girl at the desk answered obligingly, “Oh, yes! Of course I recognize him. That’s Señor Hernández. He’s been with us for almost a month now.”
A month!
“Is he still checked in?”
“I believe so. Let me check the computer.”
The wait was agonizing. Jean Rizzo could hardly stand the tension.
At last the girl came back on the line. “Yes, he’s still here. Would you like me to check his room, see if he’s in the hotel at the moment?”
“NO!” Jean almost shouted. “I mean no, thank you, there’s no need for that.”
The Casas de la Judería was only a short walk away, back across the park.
“It’s rather a delicate matter. I’ll come over myself. I can be there in five minutes.”
WALKING BRISKLY THROUGH THE underground passage that led to room 66, Jean Rizzo felt an eerie sense of calm. The comforting solidity of his gun pressing against his rib cage beneath his blue windbreaker was certainly a factor. As was the fact that, win or lose, live or die, this saga was about to be over.
Thirteen women.
Eleven cities.
Nine years.
And it ended here, tonight.
The occupant of room 66—Juan Hernández, aka Detective Luís Colomar, aka Daniel Cooper—had nowhere to run. In a few short moments, he would either be captured or killed. Rizzo had called Comisario Dmitri as he arrived at the Casas de la Judería, announcing his imminent strike on Cooper and then hanging up. If Cooper somehow managed to shoot Jean and escape, Dmitri and his men would be waiting. It would be irritating to have to let the obnoxious Spanish policeman take the credit for apprehending the Bible Killer, Jean thought as he drew nearer to room 66, traversing a courtyard enclosed by high stone walls. On the plus side, though, for that scenario to happen Jean would have to be dead, and ergo oblivious. Every cloud had a silver lining.
At the far side of the courtyard four stone steps led to another passageway that stopped almost as soon as it had begun. Jean found himself at a dead end, the wooden door of room 66 directly in front of him.
Drawing his gun, he knocked twice, hard.
“Señor Hernández?”
No answer.
“Señor Hernández, are you in there? I have an important message for you.”
Nothing.
Taking out the key that the girl at the reception desk had given him, Jean started to push it into the lock. The door creaked open by itself. Jean stormed into the room, gun drawn.
“Daniel Cooper, this is Interpol. You’re under arrest!”
Damn it.
The bed was made. There were no suitcases. Everything was spotless, clean and sparkling to within an inch of its life. By the side of the bed, a Bible lay open to John, chapter 19, verse 1.
The highlighted quote read, “They took Jesus, therefore, to the place of the skull. And there they crucified him.”
Jean Rizzo felt his stomach lurch. So he’d been right! Daniel Cooper was the Bible Killer. There could be no doubt now. Room 66 was like all the other crime scenes, with one crucial exception.