He felt at the kettle. Just warm. A few more minutes. He thought about Lucifer again, that being of unthinkable radiance. The Catholics said his nature was changeless. And so? Could he really have brought sickness and death to the world? Be the author of nightmarish evil and cruelty? It didn't make sense. Even old Rockefeller had handed out dimes now and then. He thought of the Gospels, all those people possessed. By what? Not fallen angels, he thought. Only goyim mix up devils with dybbuks. It's a joke. These were dead people trying to make a comeback. Cassius Clay can do it endlessly but not a poor dead tailor?
Satan didn't run around invading living bodies; not even the Gospels said that, reflected Kinderman. Oh, yes, Jesus made a joke about it once, he conceded. The apostles had just come to him, breathless and full of themselves with their successes in casting out demons. Jesus nodded and kept a straight face as he told them, "Yes, I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven." It was a wryness, a gentle pulling of the leg. But why lightning? Kinderman wondered. Why did Christ call Satan the "Prince of This World"?
A few minutes later, he made a cup of tea and took it up to his den. He closed the door softly, felt his way to the desk, and then turned on the light and sat down. He read the file.
The Gemini killings were confined to San Francisco and had spanned a range of seven years from 1964 to 1971, when the Gemini was killed by a rain of bullets while climbing a girder of the Golden Gate Bridge, where the police had entrapped him after countless failed attempts. During his lifetime he had claimed responsibility for twenty-six murders, each one savage and involving mutilations. The victims were both males and females, of random age, sometimes even children, and the city lived in terror, even though the Gemini's identity was known. The Gemini had offered it himself in a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle immediately after the first of his murders.
He was James Michael Vennamun, the thirty-year-old son of a noted evangelist whose meetings had been televised nationally every Sunday night at ten o'clock. But the Gemini, in spite of this, could not be found, even with the help of the evangelist, who retired from public view in 1967. When finally killed, the Gemini's body fell into the river, and though days of dredging had failed to rum it up there was little doubt about his death. A fusillade of hundreds of bullets had hit his body. And the murders had then ceased.
Kinderman quietly turned the page. This section concerned the mutilations. Abruptly he stopped and stared at a paragraph. The hairs on his neck prickled up. Could this be? he thought. My God, it couldn't! And yet there it was. He looked up and breathed and thought for a while. Then he went on.
He came to the psychiatric profile, based largely on the Gemini's rambling letters and a diary he'd kept in his youth. The Gemini's brother, Thomas, was a twin. He was mentally retarded and lived in a trembling terror of darkness, even when others were around. He slept with a light on. The father, divorced, took little care of the boys, and it was James who parented and cared for Thomas.
Kinderman was soon absorbed in The Story.
With vacant, meek eyes Thomas sat at a table while James made more pancakes for him. Karl Vennamun lurched into the kitchen clad only in pajama bottoms. He was drunk. He was carrying a shot glass and a bottle of whiskey that was almost drained. He looked at James blearily. "What are you doing?" he demanded harshly.
"Fixing Tommy more pancakes, " said James. He was walking past his father with a plateful when Vennamun savagely struck his face with the back of his hand and knocked him to the floor.
"I can see that, you snotty little bastard, " snarled Vennamun. "I said no food for him today! He dirtied his pants!"
"He can't help it!" James protested. Vennamun kicked him in the stomach, then advanced on Thomas, who was shaking with fear.
"And you! You were told not to eat! Didn't you hear me?" There were dishes of food on the table, and Vennamun swept them to the floor with his hand. "You little ape, you'll learn obedience and cleanliness, damn you!" The evangelist pulled the boy upright with his hands and began to drag him toward a door that led outside. Along the way, he cuffed him. "You're like your mother! You're filth. You're a filthy Catholic bastard."
Vennamun dragged the boy outside and to the door of the cellar. The day was bright on the hills of the wooded Reyes Peninsula. Vennamun pulled open the cellar door. "You're going down in the cellar with the rats, goddamn you!"
Thomas started trembling and his large, doe eyes were shining with fright. He cried, "No! No, don't put me in the dark! Papa, please! Please—''
Vennamun slapped him and hurled him down the stairs.
Thomas cried out, "Jim! Jim!''
The cellar door was closed and bolted. "Yeah, the rats'll keep him busy," snarled Vennamun drunkenly.
The terrified screaming began.
Later, Vennamun tied his son James to a chair, and then sat and watched television and drank. At last he fell asleep. But James heard the shrieking throughout the night.
By daybreak, there was silence. Vennamun awakened, untied James, and then went outside and opened the cellar door. "You can come out now," he shouted down into the darkness. He got no reply. Vennamun watched as James ran down the stairs. Then he heard someone weeping. Not Thomas. James. He knew that his brother's mind was gone.
Thomas was permanently institutionalized in the San Francisco State Mental Hospital. James saw him whenever he could, and at the age of sixteen ran away from home and went to work as a packing boy in San Francisco. Each evening he went to visit Thomas. He would hold his hand and read children's storybooks to him. He would stay with him until he was asleep. This went on until one evening in 1964. It was a Saturday. James had been with Thomas all day.
It was nine p.m. Thomas was in bed. James was in a chair at his bedside, close to him, while a doctor checked Thomas' heart. He removed the stethoscope from his ears and smiled at James. "Your brother's doing just fine.''
A nurse put her head in the door and spoke to James. "Sir, I'm sorry, but visiting hours are over."
The doctor motioned James to remain in his chair, and then walked to the door. "Let me speak to you a moment, Miss Reach. No, out here in the hall. " They stepped outside. "It's your first day here, Miss Reach ?''
"Yes, it is."
"Well, I hope you're going to like it here,'' said the doctor.
"I'm sure I will."
"The young man with Tom Vennamun is his brother. I'm sure you couldn't miss it. "
"Yes, I noticed,'' said Keach.
"For years he's come faithfully every night. We allow him to stay until his brother falls asleep. Sometimes he stays the whole night. It's all right. It's a special case," said the doctor.
"Oh, I see."
"And, look, the lamp in his room. The boy is terrified of darkness. Pathologically. Never turn it off. I'm afraid for his heart. It's terribly weak. "
"I'll remember," said the nurse. She smiled.
The doctor smiled back. "Well, I'll see you tomorrow, then. Good night."
"Good night, Doctor." Nurse Keach watched him walk down the hall, and her smile immediately turned down to a scowl. She shook her head and muttered, "Dumb. "
In the room, James gripped his brother's hand. He had the storybook in front of him, but he knew all the words; he had said them a thousand times before: " 'Good night, little house, and good night, mouse. Good night, comb, and good night, brush. Good night, nobody. Good night, mush. And good night to the old lady whispering "hush.'' Good night, stars. Good night, air. Good night, noises everywhere.' " James closed his eyes for a moment, weary. Then he looked to see if Thomas was asleep. He wasn 't. He was staring up at the ceiling. James saw a tear rolling down from his eye.
Thomas stammered, "I l-l-l-love you, J-J-J-James. "
"I love you, Tom," his brother said softly. Thomas closed his eyes and was soon asleep.
After James left the hospital, Nurse Reach walked past the room. She stopped and came back. She looked in. She saw Thomas alone and asleep. She came into the room, turned off the lamp and then closed the door behind her when she left. "A special case,'' she muttered. She returned to her office and her charts.
In the middle of the night, a shriek of terror sounded in the hospital. Thomas had awakened. The shrieks continued for several minutes. Then the silence was abrupt. Thomas Vennamun was dead.
And the Gemini Killer was born.
Kinderman looked up at a window. It was dawn. He felt strangely moved by what he had read. Could he have pity for such a monster? He thought again of the mutilations. Vennamun's logo had been God's finger touching Adam's; thus always the severing of the index finger. And there was always the K at the start of one of the victims' names. Vennamun, Karl.
He finished the report: "Subsequent killings of initial K victims indicate proxy murders of the father, whose eventual dropout from public life suggests the Gemini's secondary motive, specifically destruction of the father's career and reputation by way of connection with the Gemini's crimes."
Kindernian stared at the file's last page. He removed his glasses and looked again. He blinked. He didn't know what to make of it.
He jumped to the telephone just as it rang."Yes, Kinderman here," he said softly. He looked at the time and felt afraid. He heard Atkins' voice. Then he didn't. Only buzzings. He felt cold and numb and sick to his soul.
Father Dyer had been murdered.
PART TWO
The greatest event in the history of the Earth,
now taking place, may indeed be the gradual
discovery, by those with eyes to see, not merely
of Some Thing but of Some One at the peak
created by the convergence of the evolving
Universe upon itself. . . . There is only one Evil: Disunity.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
