Page 39 of Go Under

She’d learned quickly how short-lived that feeling was. It filled the hole within her, but like a rushing river, it passed, leaving the hollow deeper and emptier than before. Her frustrated scrawlings at the other murders illustrated the growing understanding that no matter what she did, it wouldn’t be enough.

As she looked at the cipher, she realized that Nora would never stop. When she finished avenging her brother, she would look for new crimes to avenge, new people to kill, new ways to fill the hole in her soul, even if temporarily.

She understood Cox a little better now. He had probably battled demons for years, decades even, only for the hole within him to tug incessantly, teasing him, whispering to him, coaxing him, taunting him, as his voice did in Kate’s dreams.

Then, in a moment of high anxiety and indescribable ecstasy, he had acted on those feelings. He had taken his first life. He had “corrected” the problems that the profane voice whispered to him about.

But it wasn't enough. That hole was a spreading sore that grew hungrier as it spread. As it ate the man Elijah Cox once was, it demanded more and more blood. More succor. More corrections. More violence.

Did he ever realize this? Did he ever stop to think of the person he was before? Did he ever miss that? Did he ever wish he could reverse time and go back to a version of himself that didn’t crave killing?

Or maybe Kate was wrong. Maybe Cox was always like this. Maybe he needed only to work up the courage to act on it.

Or maybe he had been killing for as long as he had the cunning and strength to do so, and they only knew of his most recent acts. Maybe his body count ran into the hundreds, not the dozens, and it was only when he decided he was God’s messenger and tailored his deaths to the Ten Commandments that they recognized his handiwork as anything different from the hundreds of random murders that took place every day for reasons ranging from the spiritual to the trivial.

“Any idea what it says?” Darnell asked.

Kate nodded. “The first line is the ninth commandment: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness. After that, it says, ‘Scapegoat, hearken. God’s punishment is delayed but never deferred.’”

“You can tell that already? Without deciphering it?”

“I’m deciphering it as I go along,” Kate said. “This cipher uses only simple substitution. I can read it without writing it down.”

“Huh. I guess that makes sense since it’s her first one. What does the rest of it say?”

“‘This man sought to escape God’s punishment, believing he could change his name and avoid God’s wrath. But God sees all. God knows all. God never forgot his sin, swearing before God and man to what his own eyes never saw. For his crime, God has punished him. He will punish all.’”

Darnell sighed. He wiped a hand across his brow, flicking sweat to the floor. Kate’s own uniform was soaked, and the familiar acrid smell of her own body’s oils mixed with the gathered dirt of the past several days added its bouquet to the rot and death surrounding her.

The message Cox left for her echoed in her mind. God’s punishment is delayed but never deferred.

Was Cox telling her that her father’s crime was committed long before his death? Did she need to reach further back in his life, before his career? Perhaps even to his childhood?

“Where do you think Nora is now?” Darnell asked.

Kate answered his question and hers. “I have no idea.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Nora Avery—and that was her name, would always be her name no matter what her driver’s license said—knelt at the altar to pray. As was her custom, she crossed herself and began with a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

As she continued the prayer, her thoughts drifted to the Lawgiver, the man who had shown her that God had not abandoned His scorned child, only waited for her to come to Him that He might give her the courage she needed to enact His revenge on those who had harmed her brother. She had no idea where Elijah Cox was now, no idea if he was even alive. She doubted it. The news reports from Baltimore last month reported finding his blood inside the church and at several places in the park beyond. That FBI agent had clearly shot him mortally before he escaped. He was probably in the arms of God right now, grateful that his work continued even after his death.

Nora's work was almost finished. She'd killed the false witness who had chosen to bow to the white police narrative and turn against his Black brother. She'd killed the man who aided in that falsehood by planting shoe prints inside the jewelry store. She'd killed the court clerk whose choice to withhold evidence that would have exonerated Daniel, regardless of the false evidence provided, had led to her brother's incarceration for a crime he'd never committed. She'd killed the bitch whose hate couldn't be sated by the unearned suffering of her brother and who had to spread vicious lies about a dead man's family.

Only one remained, the woman whose call had first directed the police toward her brother, the woman who had realized that she was wrong but had refused to admit that and retract the statement that put her brother in handcuffs. It had taken years of hunting to discover that name, years of dead ends, but finally, with the Lawgiver’s help, she had found her.

Perhaps even before the Lawgiver arrived in her life, she had been subconsciously preparing for this reckoning, and God had sent the Lawgiver as an angel to point her in the right direction. The Lawgiver had found the phone number used to call the police and found the woman who used that phone number on the day of her brother’s false arrest. Now Nora knew her name, and she was going to make sure she received the justice she deserved.

"Please, God," she whispered as she finished the Lord's Prayer. "Please God, give me the opportunity to finish this. I know this is for your will and not mine, but God, please let me have the satisfaction of seeing that whore die for what she did to my brother."

Tears welled in the corners of her eyes. She clasped her hands tightly and pressed them to her forehead, temporarily overcome by her anguish. “Please let this be enough.”

Not that she wasn’t willing to kill more if she needed to. Those who bore false witness deserved death. But the pain she felt, the hollowness, the rawness in her center through which every breath was agony, that she wanted gone. Her brother had torn her heart out when he died, victim to the hate of men who saw his goodness, his lack of belonging in the den of evil in which they were held.

Her eyes hardened. In fact, she wasn’t finished. This final woman was only the conclusion of the first phase of her revenge. She would finish with her, then she would visit the men in prison who had murdered her brother. She had no idea how, but the Lawgiver had instructed her in his letters to have faith, to trust that God would provide.

And He would. How could He not? He was a God of love, wasn’t He? He must give her the chance to take her revenge. After all, Vengeance belonged to Him, and she was His servant.