Interstate 10 had cleared up somewhat, and traffic was moving. There’d been few police control points the previous evening, but now they were in place all across the city. Officers were insisting that everyone either leave the city or go to designated shelters. The streets had to be completely empty by the six thirty curfew. They made it clear that everyone outside after that would be detained for their own safety.
The radio warned that Katrina’s leading edge was approaching. Amaia watched as curtains of rain lashed across the city from east to west. A phone rang. Bull lowered the radio volume, and Dupree answered the call. He listened intently and then ended it.
“Detective Bull,” he said to the driver before turning to the others, “we’re going back to the operations center. They have the bullet from Andrews, the father. It’s not the same as those that killed the others. The techs found it was old, manufactured decades back, and when they put it in the system, all kinds of alarms went off. The ballistics match the weapon used to murder a family in Madison, Wisconsin, eighteen years ago.
“Madison and Quantico are sending everything they have to us. We have a conference call with Tucker and Emerson in twenty minutes.”
23
EVIL
New Orleans, Louisiana
Martin Lenx, his wife, two sons aged twelve and sixteen, and a daughter of fifteen lived in a big house in a small community outside Madison, Wisconsin, with Alma, Martin’s elderly mother. Martin had no siblings, and he’d inherited the house after the death of his father, a stern Lutheran pastor. Reverend Lenx had escaped from Austria to the United States during the Second World War. Alma’s inherited wealth had allowed them to live well. After her husband’s death, Alma moved into a separate suite on an upper floor. The family’s bodies were found in a state of advanced decomposition, after neighbors began to wonder why the Lenxes hadn’t returned from visiting relatives.
They’d been dead for a month.
The house was unheated, but even so, the stink was appalling. The pealing bells of the fifth movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique incessantly sounded their warning knell as a counterpart to the hideous dark brown trail of blood leading to the mansion’s music room. There, laid in a line with their heads oriented toward the north, were the bodies of the entire family—except for the father, a devout Christian, a corporate branch office manager with a good reputation in the community.
Martin Lenx had disappeared. In his office, the police found a letter addressed to his pastor, in which he explained he’d been obliged to take action because his family had strayed from the godly path. He found his wife’s devotion to makeup and modern aesthetics inappropriate; his teenage daughter’s recent declaration that she wanted to be a singer and his sons’ increasingly “depraved” musical tastes were offenses to God. Martin had seen them slipping away, and he’d refused to accept their fall. As head of the family, he’d recognized his responsibility and known he had to act. He’d prayed a great deal, and he’d concluded they had to die. He would save their souls before they were too depraved to be redeemed.
In the weeks after the bodies were found, the police discovered that Martin Lenx had serious financial problems. A few weeks before the murders, he’d been unusually happy, optimistic about his chances for a management position at a local bank, but that hadn’t panned out. The investigators found he’d filed an application for a gun permit the day after he received the rejection letter. The gun shop’s records were a perfect match to the .22-caliber revolver used to kill the Lenxes. The huge house inherited from his father was encumbered with two mortgages, and Lenx was facing foreclosure.
A month later, Martin’s car was found abandoned in a parking lot at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, though there was no record of him in the passenger lists of departing flights. His pistol was never found. Martin Lenx had been listed as missing, possibly armed and dangerous, for eighteen years. Forensic psychologists thought there was a chance he had committed suicide.
Amaia Salazar didn’t for a second believe Martin Lenx had ever entertained the idea of killing himself.
Johnson read to them the letter Martin had left for his minister. Amaia weighed each word, knowing she had to pay attention both to the explicit message and to what lay behind it, for only a deeper reading could throw light upon the man’s state of mind and intentions. She scribbled her impressions about stylistic variations and the odd thread of Lenx’s narrative, transcribing entire sentences verbatim in her own private shorthand.
He used apocalyptic metaphors several times. “The sun darkened, and the moon no longer gave its light.” His prophesizing was nothing more than an attempt to justify his act; he presented it as impossible to avoid, for it was the destiny to which he’d been condemned.
“The stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be moved.” Martin had accumulated decades of resentment; his letter described failures, perceived slights, frustrations, and trivial humiliations. Despite all he had suffered, he knew he was special; he lived on a higher plane, looking down on the rest of the family.
Amaia knew that people with Lenx’s obsessions usually found an excuse to blame their failures on the women in their lives. Martin blamed his mother above all. She’d been terribly strict with him when he was growing up, but now she’d been encouraging her granddaughter’s absurd ambitions, tolerating her youthful impetuosity, and mocking Martin’s discomfort. He dismissed his wife as a timid, fearful creature who’d spoiled his offspring rotten. She’d failed so completely that he no longer recognized the charming children who’d once filled him with pride.
Amaia held her breath when she heard the part of the letter that concerned the daughter. Martin was obsessed with her. The child who’d been the apple of his eye, his tiny princess, lost his favor as she grew up and revealed herself to be a wanton, hell-bent on besmirching the family name. He wrote of failed attempts to correct her and bring her back to the path of truth and righteousness. Nothing had worked. Martin had seen his little angel mutate before his eyes.
Some nights he got up and visited their bedrooms one after another. He studied them as they slept, heedless of how damned they were. He’d loved those innocent faces. Imagining himself as Lot, the pious patriarch who fled Sodom and Gomorrah, Lenx had hovered over them for hours, seeking some feeling, any feeling, within himself. The last visit was always to his daughter’s bedroom. Her abundant red hair lay spread across her white pillow like a fiery halo. She’d always been his favorite. He’d placed his greatest hope in her, and she was his greatest disappointment.
The time for pity was past. Martin was exhausted; he’d used the last reserves of energy trying repeatedly to bring them to the light. He’d done all he could, God knows; he’d worked, prayed, and sacrificed in the struggle to preserve his home and family. It was too much for any man to bear.
Each of those nights, he’d leaned over before going back to bed and whispered his promise to her. “I’ll save you. Daddy will save you.”
As Amaia listened to Johnson read Lenx’s crazed letter, its powerful threats and weighty words of condemnation echoed in her mind. Without intending to do so, she released a long, stifled groan that made them all turn to look at her.