“I shouldn’t’ve taken it so lightly,” I said. “Not even allowing for the possibility that what happened could be inexplicable. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I can’t judge. As I’m sure you saw, I was unprepared for what happened. It completely caught me by surprise. Not just that there was a manifestation, but that it happened so quickly.”
“It did seem pretty fast.”
“It was as if all the demon really wanted to do was destroy me,” he said. “Like an ambush. It was just hiding. Waiting to pounce.”
I nodded. “Maybe it was.”
The night was nearly over. It would be morning soon, and through his window I could see that the moonlit lake was perfectly still, its smooth surface a mirror image of the sparsely star-sprinkled sky above it. Still in a state of awe and wonderment, I breathed in deeply, held it, then let it out very slowly.
“I was easy prey,” he said. “Should’ve been ready. What I did was stupid and I should’ve known better.”
“Well—”
“She’d be alive and free from her torment if I hadn’t been so derelict in my duty. I cost her her life. There’s no justification for my negligence. I can hardly live with it, but I absolutely cannot live with people thinking I raped and murdered that troubled little girl.”
I nodded my understanding.
The dying fire popped, sparks flying out onto the red brick, its flickering flame sending pulsating light dancing on the spines of his colorful books.
“You think once Steve sees the tape, he’ll clear me and the investigation will end?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“The tape doesn’t show everything,” I said, “and it raises as many questions as it answers.”
“I don’t understand. I thought for sure it would clear up everything. What doesn’t it show?”
“The tape is stopped right after Tammy knocks you into the wall. You’re still on the floor when it’s turned off.”
His eyes grew wide in alarm and looked genuinely fearful. “Turned off?”
“Someone came in and turned it off,” I said. “Who was it?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“You don’t know who came in? You didn’t see anyone?”
He hesitated, seeming to calculate too much for someone telling the truth. “No one came in during the exorcism.”
“You had to think about it a little too long.”
“I wanted to be sure,” he said.
“Normally when someone hesitates that much and sounds the way you do, they’re lying.”
“You sayin’ I’m lyin’?” he asked, trying hard to sound offended, but lacking conviction.
“I’m asking.”
“Well, I’m tellin’ you. No one came in during the ritual. At least not that I saw. But I was banged up pretty good and maybe I didn’t see them.”
It was possible. He was preoccupied and he had just been nearly knocked out, but something didn’t feel right. Maybe he was just nervous or shaken up or naive or worried about Kathryn, but he seemed to be lying.
“Why would someone turn off the camcorder?” I asked.
Shaking his head, a perplexed look filling his face, he said, “I have no idea.”
“How much longer were you in the cabin after she knocked you into the wall?”
He looked off into the distance, squinting to see something that wasn’t there. “It’s hard to say. It seems so timeless during it, but I’d say around half an hour or more.”
I shook my head in frustration. “That’s a lot we don’t have.”
“And every bit of it further confirmation that what I’m sayin’ is true. Tammy was killed by demonic forces, and my greatest fear is that they’re now inside someone else at St. Ann’s waiting to hurt or kill another child of God.”
The fire popped again, sending an explosion of embers into the air with the smoke rising up the chimney, which in turn set off an explosion in my mind.
Jumping up, I dug the phone out of my pocket.
“What is it?” Father Thomas said. “Where are you going?”
48
“What time is the demolition of the mill?” I asked.
I was talking to Steve on my cell as I ran toward my truck.
“About an hour,” he said. “Some of my guys are working crowd control. Why?”
“I could be way off on this, but I’d rather be wrong than—”
“What is it?”
“If they want to kill Kathryn, what better way to do it than in the destruction of the mill? They’ve already gotten rid of the only two guys connecting them to the criminal activity we know about. If they had Cole abduct her and tie her up at the mill, then killed him and Russ, they’d—”
“Wouldn’t they just kill her?” he said. “Even if they were going to try to destroy the body during the explosion?”
I reached my truck and climbed inside as the first hint of false dawn illuminated the horizon.
“Maybe,” I said, pressing the phone to my ear with my shoulder as I started the truck. “But what if they have Cole and Russ tie her up and she escapes or is discovered before the explosion, she points the finger at them, but they’re already dead—supposedly killed each other.”
“Why would they want to kill her?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “Why take her at all?”
“Well, if they do want her dead, what you’re saying makes sense,” he said. “We’ve got to search the mill before—”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
Bouncing down the dirt road toward the highway without a seatbelt on, holding the phone between my shoulder and the side of my head while having to shift, I dropped the phone several times.
“John,” he said, “I’m over an hour away. I’ll never make it in time.”
“Can you get the demolition delayed?”
“I can try. It’ll be hard by phone. Plus, if you’re right about what they’re doing...”
“How many officers do you have at the site?” I asked.
When I reached the highway, I slowed just enough to make sure there was nothing coming, then floored it, slinging dirt onto the road, my tires screeching on the pavement.
“Not many,” he said. “And they won’t be much help. It’s a crossing guard and school resource officer.”
I thought about it, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m gonna start making calls now,” he said. “I’ll try to get the demolition pushed back first. At certain spots on the way I’m not gonna have coverage. I’ll get there as soon as I can, but it’ll be too late. If she’s there, you’ve got to find her.”
A large crowd had gathered to see the last of the mill go the way of the paper market, imploding at the dawning of a new day. They lined both sides of the highway, the first of the sun cresting over the tree tops glinting off their cars.
I had hoped to drive down the road beside the marina like I had before and sneak into the back of the mill through the same hole in the fence, but I could tell immediately that wasn’t going to be possible because of the crowd and the roadblocks.
Parking in the lot of a closed drugstore in town, I ran as fast as I could toward the site. By the time I reached the first roadblock, I was breathing heavily and my side was beginning to hurt. Still, I couldn’t help smiling a little when I saw that the officer standing guard was the same one I had encountered at the entrance of the marina the morning Tommy’s body was found.
He held his hands up the moment he saw me.
“I’ve got to get in there,” I said, bending forward slightly and gasping for breath.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I learned my lesson. Chief said if I ever did something like that again, I’d be doing this my entire career.”
“He’s the one who sent me. He was going to call you guys, but he must have lost reception on his way.”
“Good one,” he said. “That’s good.”
“I don’t have time for this. W
e think someone might be inside one of the buildings. I’m going in, you go see if you can get them to delay the detonation.”
He hesitated a moment, but shook his head. “If the chief’s on his way, he can do it when he gets here.”
“He won’t make it in time.”
He smiled and nodded as if that confirmed I was lying.
“Call him,” I said.
He hesitated again, squinted as he considered me a moment, then lifted his radio. He asked if any of the other officers had heard from Steve. They hadn’t. He then pulled his cell phone off the clip on his belt and punched in a number I assumed was Steve’s.
While we waited, I glanced at my watch. We had less than half an hour.
“No answer,” he said. “You’re just gonna have to wait.”
“Okay,” I said, lifting my hands in a placating gesture.
He relaxed slightly, and as he did, I made my move.
Closing the distance between us in one big step, I came up with the little .38, which I pointed beneath his chin as I pinned him to the side of the car.
“Chief Taylor will straighten all this out once he gets here,” I said, “but I can’t wait that long to go in.”
As I spoke, I reached down and unsnapped his holster and withdrew his gun.
“I’m not going to hurt you or anybody else. Just have a seat in your car until the chief gets here.”
I opened the back door of his patrol car and shoved him inside, then pocketing both guns, ran down the road between the mill and the new marina, trying not to think about the ramifications of what I had just done or what I was about to do.
49
The back of the mill was farther away than it looked, and by the time I reached it and crawled through the fence, I was gasping heavily, my side felt like it would split open, and I had a little less than twenty minutes left.
I felt like my heart might explode, but I kept running, my eyes scanning each area as I whipped my head around to search it. I figured that if she was here, it was far more likely that she was inside one of the buildings than out, but I still searched beneath the various networks of pipes as I ran between the buildings.
The first structure I entered was an old, rusted metal storage building with broken windowpanes and a missing door on one end. Except for a couple of huge rolls of paper, the building was empty. It was a waste of time, but I checked behind them anyway.
I entered the largest of the buildings next, running beside a row of large pipes, looking beneath the enormous vats and the long conveyor belts. It was huge, probably more than an acre, and I was again amazed at how much machinery had been left. It would be easy to miss a small area where she could be hidden.
I started calling her, yelling her name as loud as I could. It reverberated off the concrete and metal and got lost in the open space of the three-story building. After a few moments, I stopped and waited, but there was no response. Eventually, I climbed up onto the metal catwalk and looked down into the vats, barrels, and drums, and all along the soiled concrete floor.
From the high vantage point, I could see the massive amounts of explosives running along the walls, wired to the support beams of the ceiling and to the larger pieces of equipment. It was at that moment I fully realized the situation I was in. This building or the entire plant could explode at any moment. I could be spending my very last minutes on earth looking for someone who probably wasn’t even here.
When I came out of the building, light-headed from sleep deprivation and too much oxygen, I looked at my watch and realized there was no way I could do even a cursory search of the entire facility. I had less than ten minutes, and the business offices in the front would take longer than that.
I would have to narrow down my remaining search to the most likely places. I just had no idea what those were. For a moment, I was so at a loss, so overwhelmed by the sheer size of the facility, that I froze. Just stood there. Unable to think. Unable to move.
Was this how I was going to die? Standing still, waiting for the bang?
When the first sound and vibration came, I jumped. By the time the second one occurred, I realized it was my cell. Ripping it out of my pocket, I shouted into it.
“You find her?” Steve asked.
“No,” I said. “You get them to delay the demolition?”
“I couldn’t get through to the right person before,” he said. “I just got service back. Where are you?”
I told him.
“You’ve got to get out of there,” he said. “Hopefully she’s not in there, but either way you’ve got to get out now.”
“Okay,” I said. “Tell your men not to shoot me. I had to assault one to get in.”
I hung up with no intention of leaving and glanced at my watch. I had a little under five minutes, probably not even enough time to get out safely.
I had to go, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t leave knowing she might be here—knowing it was my fault if she was and that I could do something about it.
I paused for a moment and prayed for help—something I rarely did during an investigation. I routinely prayed for the victims, occasionally for the perpetrators, often for wisdom and insight, but rarely for actual help. I guess I believed that God left these things largely up to us—if not, my time would be better spent locked away somewhere praying instead of investigating. Now, I was desperate, at the end of my abilities, and quickly running out of time. So I prayed.
And God answered.
I couldn’t explain what happened. Didn’t even begin to understand it. But I knew a spiritual impression when I had one. And I had one.
I quickly ran over to the large pipes rising out of the ground. Finding a door, I forced it and entered an underground service tunnel. It was dark and dank, and my shoes splashed water as I ran along the sidewalk, crouched beneath the pipes.
About ten feet down the tunnel, I found Kathryn cuffed to one of the pipes, her head hanging down, duct tape around her mouth. I couldn’t tell if she was conscious or not, but she didn’t lift her head as I ran toward her.
“Kathryn. Can you hear me?”
She looked up, seeming to wonder if I were real or imaginary.
“We’ve got to get out of here now. The mill’s about to explode.”
I yanked on the cuffs and examined the pipe. They weren’t coming off.
“Kathryn,” I said, my voice loud, “listen to me. I’ve got to shoot the cuffs to try to get you free. It’s going to be loud. Hold your head down and don’t move your hands.”
I pulled my gun out, put the barrel next to one of the lengths in the cuffs, ducked my head behind my other arm, and fired.
The sound was even more deafening than I had thought it would be, and my ears rang as I checked the chain.
Nothing. The round had made no impact on the chain.
Wishing I had something more powerful than my .38, I pulled out the gun I had taken from Steve’s officer. Thinking it was a .9mm, I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a .45.
“I’m going to try it again,” I said. “Be very still and keep your head down.”
Before I fired the first round from the .45, the first explosion sounded. It shook the ground and sounded like a jet breaking the sound barrier.
Realizing time was out, I jacked a round into the chamber and fired the .45 at the handcuff chain several times without pausing. The sound was even louder than the .38, but nothing compared to the explosion.
The shots lit up the tunnel, filled it with the acrid smell of burned gun powder, rained down spent casings, still burning hot, and broke the chain.
As Kathryn’s hands fell to her sides, I removed the tape from her mouth, dropped the gun, snatched her up, and began to make my way out of the tunnel as best I could, hearing other explosions around us as I did.
When we surfaced, we stepped into a thick cloud of smoke, ash, dust, and debris that reminded me of footage I had seen from the streets of New York when the Twin Towers had come tumbling down. Unable to see,
I lifted Kathryn across my shoulder and ran in what I thought was the direction I had come in. As the mind-rattling, ear-deafening explosions continued, I realized they were coming from up front. They must have started there and were headed toward the back where we were.
I knew we didn’t have long.
We were close to the largest building in the plant and once it started exploding, we’d be dead.
Coughing and stumbling, head and heart aching, I ran as quickly as I could, nearly falling several times, but somehow able to stay on my feet.
When I reached the fence, I laid Kathryn on the ground, crawled through, then pulled her out.
Even when we were on the other side, I realized we were still too close to the largest building, and there was no time to get away from it. This was it—unless...
Hoisting Kathryn up again, I ran toward the retaining wall. When I reached it, without stopping, I tossed Kathryn into the bay and dove in after her.
In the water, Kathryn conscious now, we waited for the final series of explosions, but they never came.
Eventually, I heard Steve yelling my name, and I told him where we were.
When he looked over the wall and saw Kathryn, the relief on his face was indescribable.
“If I’d known y’all were just back here swimming, I wouldn’t have interrupted the hard work of the demolition crew.”
“Thank you,” Steve said.
We were standing several feet away from the ambulance Kathryn was being treated in. A blanket was draped over my wet clothes, but did very little in the way of warmth, and I shivered in the cold breeze blowing in off the bay.
“If you hadn’t found her,” he added, letting it hang there between us.
It was obvious how much he cared for her—far more than I realized.
“Why’d he do it—or try to do it? We are thinking Reid was behind this, right?”
I nodded. “He has the two guys from the cabin do it, then takes them out. That’s our best working theory right now.”
“But why?”
“That’s what we have to find out. Did she see something? Does she know something? She poses a threat to him or more likely the Gulf Coast Company in some way. Now that we know that, we can figure out what it is.”
Six John Jordan Mysteries Page 108
