“You stay here,” he said to the crewman as Ramos moved behind him. From the decks of the two police boats, guns were trained on the other two of the yacht's three entryways belowdecks. Then MacArthur took the lead, using the very edges of the steps, the only parts not covered in blood, to make his way below.

This is what they found.

There was a small, dark passageway, with the head to the immediate right and a quarter berth to the left. The head was empty and smelled of chemicals; a shower curtain was pulled back, revealing a clean white shower stall. The quarter berth was unoccupied. The passageway was carpeted, and the material felt wet beneath their feet as they walked, blood bubbling up from between the fibers. They passed the galley and a second pair of facing doors that led into two sleeping compartments, both fitted with small double beds and closets wide enough to take only two pairs of shoes set side by side.

The door leading into the main salon was closed and no sounds came from behind it. Ramos looked at Wallace and shrugged. Wallace retreated back into one of the bedrooms, his gun in his hand. Ramos moved into the other and called out: “Police. If there's anybody in there, come out now and keep your hands up.”

There was no response. Wallace stepped back into the passage, reached for the handle of the door, and keeping his back against the wall, slowly pulled it open.

There was blood on the walls, on the ceiling, and on the floor. It dripped from the light fixtures and obscured the paintings between the portholes. Three naked bodies hung upside down from the beams in the ceiling: two women, one man. One woman had gray blond hair that almost touched the floor; the other was small and dark. The man was bald, apart from a thin circle of gray hair, which was mostly soaked red with his blood. The throat of each had been cut, although the blond also had stab wounds to her stomach and legs. It was her blood on the steps and soaked into the carpet. Deborah Mercier had tried to run, or to intervene, when they took her husband.

The smell of blood was overpowering in the confined space, and the bodies swayed and bumped against one another with the rocking of the boat. They had been killed facing the door, and the spray from their arteries had hit only three sides of the cabin.

But there was still some blood behind them. It formed a pattern that could be seen between the moving bodies. MacArthur reached forward and stopped the swaying of Deborah Mercier's corpse. She hung to the left of the others, so that by stilling her the others also ceased to move. She was cold, and he shuddered at the touch, but now he could see clearly what had been written behind them in bright, red arterial blood.

It was one word:

SINNERS

23

WHAT HARM CAN IT DO?

Jack Mercier's words, spoken on the day that he first asked me to look into Grace's death, came back to me as I learned of what had been found in the main salon of the Eliza May, its decks stained with red and Jack Mercier's crucified form hanging from the mast. They came back to me as I saw the pictures of the yacht in the following day's papers, smaller photographs beside it of Jack and Deborah Mercier, and of the attorney Warren Ober and his wife, Eleanor.

What harm can it do?

I recalled myself sitting, wet and shivering, in the bow of Marine 4, surrounded by the cries of gulls as arrangements were made to tow the Eliza May back to shore. I was there for over two hours, the lineaments of Jack Mercier's body slowly fading and growing indistinct as evening fell. MacArthur was the only one who spoke to me, and then only to detail the discovery of the bodies and the word written in blood upon the wall behind them.

Sinners.

“The Aroostook Baptists,” I said.

MacArthur grimaced. “Little early for a copycat, don't you think?”

“It's not a copycat killing,” I answered. “It's the same people.”

MacArthur sat down heavily beside me. Seawater swirled around his black leather shoes. “The Baptists have been dead for over thirty years,” he began. “Even if whoever killed them was still alive, why would he-or they-start again now?”

I was too tired to go on hiding things, much too tired.

“I don't think they ever stopped killing,” I told him. “They've always been doing it, quietly and discreetly. Mercier was closing in on them, trying to put pressure on the Fellowship through the courts and the IRS. He wanted to draw them out, and he succeeded. They responded by killing him and those who were prepared to stand alongside him: Yossi Epstein in New York, Alison Beck in Minneapolis, Warren Ober, even Grace Peltier.”

Now, their countermeasures were almost complete. The word on the wall indicated that, a deliberate echo of the slaughter with which they had begun and that had only recently been revealed. There was now one final act left to perform: the recovery of the missing Apocalypse. Once that was accomplished they would disappear, vanishing below the surface to lie dormant in some quiet, dark cavern of the honeycomb world.

“Who are they?” asked MacArthur.

“The Faulkners,” I replied. “The Faulkners are the Fellowship.”

MacArthur shook his head. “You're in a shitload of trouble,” he said.

The sound of Marine 1 approaching us disturbed my thoughts. “They're going back to pick up the local ME, have the victims declared dead at the scene,” said MacArthur, unlocking the cuffs. “You go back with them. Someone will take you to the department. I'll follow on within the hour and we'll pick up this discussion where we left off.”

He watched me as I stepped carefully from the Whaler into the smaller boat. It turned in a broad arc and headed for the shore, leaving the Eliza May behind. The sun was setting, and the waves were afire as they prepared to haul Jack Mercier's body down.

At the Scarborough Police Department I sat for a time in the lobby and watched the dispatchers behind their protective screen. My clothes were soaked and I couldn't seem to get warm again. I found myself reading, over and over, warnings against rabies and DUI posted on the bulletin boards. I felt like I was coming down with a fever. My head ached and the skin on my scalp seemed to be constricting around the stitches.

Eventually I was led into the general-purpose briefing room. The command staff had just broken up their meeting in the smaller conference room, where MacArthur had been chewed out for letting me on board the Whaler. I was trying to draw in some heat through a cup of coffee, a patrol officer at the door to make sure I didn't try to steal one of the canine trophies stored in the cabinet, when MacArthur joined me, accompanied by Captain Bobby Melia, one of two captains in the force who were second in command to Chief Byron Fischer. MacArthur carried a tape recorder with him. They sat across from me, the door behind them closed, and asked me to take them through it all again. Then Norman Boone arrived from the BATF, and Ellis Howard from the Portland PD.

And I went through it again.

And again.

And again.

I was tired, cold, and hungry. Each time I told them what I knew, it got harder and harder to remember what I had left out, and their questions became more and more probing. But I couldn't tell them about Marcy Becker, because if the Fellowship did have connections among the police, then telling anyone in law enforcement about her would be tantamount to signing her death warrant. They were threatening to charge me as an accessory to Mercier's murder, in addition to accusations of withholding evidence, obstructing justice, and anything else that the law allowed. I let the waves of their anger break over me.

Two bodies were missing from the boat: those of the porn star with the busted finger, and Quentin Harrold, both of whom had gone out on the yacht to guard the Obers and the Merciers. The Scarborough PD suspected they had died in the first burst of gunfire. Jack Mercier had tried unsuccessfully to fire off a flare but had instead ignited his own clothing, which explained the charring on his body. There was a Colt revolver in the cabin where the bodies were found, but it had not been fired. Cartridges were scattered on the floor beside it where someone had made a last, desperate effort to load.