Page 22 of Go Alone

And for a moment, he had lost sight of who the victim was and who the criminal was. Marcus needed these answers, but he also needed to keep the primary objective in the front of his mind.

There was a killer out there, taking justice into their own hands, enacting vengeance that didn’t belong to him. Cox was the sort of person who believed that it was right and just to kill those who transgressed God’s commandments. Marcus was the sort of man who put people like Cox and his disciples in jail.

He glanced back at the weeping Oliver before leaving the house and heading back to the crime scene.

Not in time for Deborah, he thought. I didn’t catch them in time for her.

CHAPTER NINE

The Advocate looked up at the night sky and smiled softly at the stars. There weren’t many visible in Columbus. He liked the city lights as well as anyone born and raised in the big city, but sometimes he wished he could see more of the lights God had hung in the sky at the beginning of His creation.

He admired these ones, though, the few that shone through the million-odd lumens of LEDs that illuminated the streets of Ohio’s capital. The lesser light, but they ruled by night despite the hubris of humankind below.

The Lawgiver’s voice spoke in his head. I believe that was the moon that Genesis was referencing.

“Stars too, Father,” the Advocate said aloud. “He made those too.”

He’d given Father Cox a soft, grandfatherly voice like the one Father Clinton had when the Advocate was a boy. It fit. The Lawgiver was benevolent. He should have a benevolent voice.

So this is benevolence, what you’re doing, another voice, this one firmer and harsher, asked.

That was the Advocate’s father, not a heartless man as the Advocate’s brother had once claimed, but one who had never learned how to love others. He could only lead them. He could only correct them. It took a man blessed by God to both love and correct children.

He’d never actually heard the Lawgiver’s voice. Their communication came through letters addressed to the fabricated twin brother of the individual whose name the Advocate used. Once a month, he’d drive to Cincinnati and check the post office box he’d reserved under that name and check for a letter.

The last letter came two weeks ago. In that letter, the Lawgiver told the Advocate that they wouldn’t communicate anymore. He’d exhorted the Advocate to be strong and of good courage and assured him that the other item he’d sent included both the names of the people the Lawgiver targeted and the people the Advocate desired to correct.

He graciously allowed the Advocate to complete his list first, although the Advocate suspected that it was due to convenience. Every name on that list lived within an hour's drive of Columbus.

The Advocate didn’t drive tonight. Howard Greer was the only target outside of the Columbus urban area, the only one not accessible via walking and public transportation. It was a risk to drive there. Small towns noticed everything. He looked generic enough that he wasn’t worried about an identification based on his appearance, especially because he hadn’t used his real name in years and the name he was using belonged to someone who looked far different. That man was dead anyway.

The van was a bigger problem. It was the van in which the Advocate lived for most of the past six years, and it was painted a pastel blue that would have looked ridiculous on a sports car let alone a delivery van. He had never cared about that in the past, but then, he’d never killed anyone before.

So the van was gone, ditched in the Hoover Reservoir. It would be found soon, but it would contain nothing that would lead the FBI to him.

For the rest of his time in Columbus, the Advocate would walk and use public transit. He’d sleep where he slept now, in the crawlspace underneath a foreclosed house in Deer Creek that was weeks from being released for inspection. The homeowner had already moved.

His homelessness was his fault. He had money to pay his loan. He was defaulting on purpose so when his divorce was finalized, the home couldn’t be sold and the proceeds split.

The Advocate reached the Sharon Woods, a seven-hundred-sixty-one-acre park whose westernmost portion lay within Deer Creek. He liked walking through the woods when he could. The noise of the city faded here, and though the walking paths remained well lit late into the evening, he knew of places the streetlamps didn’t reach, places where he could stop and see more of his precious stars.

He stayed only fifteen minutes tonight. Cassiopeia, the beauty, could be seen from here. Ursas Major and Minor were, of course, easily visible. In Millbrook, Draco was visible weaving between the bears.

Beautiful. All of it is perfect. All of it was given to mankind. Yet humanity obfuscated it.

He moved on, a frown marring his peaceful visage.

He was smart enough to recognize that making streetlights wasn’t humanity’s big sin. He liked stars, but he didn’t want to slingshot everyone back into the pre-Industrial age so the nights would be darker. It was just that humanity obfuscated—no, ignored—God’s actual commandments. They spurned his actual gifts and demanded the gifts given to others.

He’d never understand it. How could someone be so selfish, so greedy, that they needed to take a home that belonged to others?

And how cruel could the world be that everyone threw their hands in the air and just accepted it. No one did anything about it. No one was willing to be the slightest bit inconvenienced to help people in need.

By the time the Advocate reached the foreclosed house, his thoughts had darkened too much for the light of the stars to brighten them. He approached from the rear of the house—a necessity even in an urban neighborhood where everyone wore blinders—and squatted next to the back porch. He shone his pocket flashlight around the loose wooden panel, shutting the light off and stilling when a car passed. When the car continued without stopping, he removed the wooden panel and shone his light in the crawlspace underneath.

He wasn’t worried much about spiders or centipedes. They were annoying but not dangerous. Snakes were a different matter entirely. The Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake would warn you before it struck, but the Northern Copperhead would just bite.

He checked very carefully for both species every night before settling in for bed. He took steps to prevent incursion, but even so. Snakes had a habit of sneaking in unseen and taking a life before the victim realized they were being stalked.