Welcome to Promise City

by Greg Cox

  Jordan nodded, as though he’d anticipated Richard’s query. He extracted a loose piece of paper from his breast pocket. “Three of the Marked have been eradicated. This list contains the current identities of the seven remaining Marked.”

  He handed the paper to Richard, who was startled by the names on the list, which included a presidential advisor, a high-ranking Vatican official, a major Hollywood producer, a wealthy Arab sheik, a five-star general, a Chinese bureaucrat, and a world-famous Tibetan lama. All extremely powerful individuals. These were the people responsible for Isabelle’s death?

  “Where did you get this from?” he asked.

  Jordan’s answer surprised him. “Tom Baldwin. Given the Marked’s political connections and clout, his hands were tied, so he passed the list on to me so that I could ‘take care of’ the problem for him.”

  Take care of? Richard put two and two together. “You want me to dispose of the Marked. Using my abilities.”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything,” Jordan declared, carefully maintaining a degree of plausible deniability. “As a friend, I felt compelled to inform you of the circumstances surrounding your daughter’s death and provide you with whatever information I had concerning her murderers.” He looked Richard squarely in the eyes. Despite his words, there was no mistaking his meaning. “You’re an ex-soldier, you have an amazing ability, and every reason to hate the Marked as much as I do. But whatever you do next is up to you. You’re your own man. You always have been.”

  He got up from the couch. “I’ll be heading back to my headquarters downtown. Please feel free to stay here at the lake house for as long as necessary.”

  He left the list behind.

  SIX

  “ARE YOU CERTAIN it was the wrong body?”

  Bernard Grayson, of Grayson & Son Funeral Home, reacted in shock to the news that a stranger had been found in Danny Farrell’s coffin. His gaunt face was composed of sharp, angular planes. A widow’s peak met above his high forehead. An austere black suit befitted his profession. He sat behind a large walnut desk as Tom and Diana confronted him with their discovery at the cemetery. Bookshelves lined one wall, while another was occupied by photos of Grayson with various civic leaders and celebrities. The pale blue walls were tastefully muted. Organ music played softly over the sound system. Grayson & Son had handled the funerals of both Danny and his mother.

  “Positive,” Tom confirmed. “Dental records have identified the body as Delbert Ludden, a homeless man who was killed in the rioting last year, about the same time my nephew died.” He and Diana had left their NTAC jackets and vests in the car to avoid attracting attention. “There was no trace evidence that Danny’s body ever occupied the coffin.”

  Diana leaned forward in her seat. “But the coffin did match the one Shawn Farrell purchased from your firm two months ago.”

  “Oh dear.” Grayson dabbed at his sweaty brow with a handkerchief. He glanced at the office door to make sure it was shut. “I can’t tell you how mortifying this is. I can only assure you that nothing like this has ever happened before. Grayson & Son has enjoyed a spotless reputation ever since my late father founded the business over thirty years ago.” He looked sheepishly at Tom. “You and your family have my profound apologies for whatever went wrong.”

  Diana kept the pressure on. “Do you have any idea what might have happened?”

  “I wish I did,” Grayson said. “You have to understand, it was a very chaotic time. The outbreak claimed over nine thousand lives in a matter of days. The city’s funeral industry was strained to the breaking point. We were overwhelmed with fatalities.” He winced at the memory. “I can only assume that, in the confusion of those dark days, some sort of mix-up occurred.” He tugged at his collar. “Again, I’m very sorry for this distressing turn of events.”

  Tom wanted answers, not apologies. “So where is my nephew’s body now?”

  “To be honest, I have no idea.” Grayson called up the relevant files on his laptop. He hastily scanned the display. “All our records seem to be in order. Your nephew should be buried alongside his mother.”

  Diana asked the logical next question. “Well, where is Ludden’s body supposed to be?”

  “Let me see.” Grayson keyed the vagrant’s name into his computer. “According to our records, Mr. Ludden’s remains were cremated. The unclaimed ashes were eventually picked up by the city to be buried in the planned memorial park. It’s possible they’re still in storage somewhere.”

  Tom didn’t buy the mortician’s explanations. He distinctly remembered viewing Danny’s body in the coffin during the memorial service. Or what had appeared to be Danny’s body. He tried to figure out how they had been fooled. Shape-shifting? A mass illusion? Astral projection? In Promise City, the possibilities were endless.

  “Nice office,” Diana commented. Getting up from her chair, she strolled over to the wall, where a framed photo of Grayson posing with Jordan Collier was prominently displayed. She nodded at the portrait. “You a fan?”

  Grayson stiffened in his chair. “I believe Mr. Collier is a great man.” A wary expression dared the agents to contradict him. “Have you read his book? 4400 and Counting?”

  “I have an autographed copy,” Tom said dryly. He wasn’t surprised by the man’s admiration for Collier. Earlier research had already turned up multiple links between the mortician and Collier’s Movement. Grayson & Son seemed to be the preferred funeral home for Collier’s followers and their families. They had even handled the funeral of Isabelle Tyler. Granted, Grayson might just be trying to cash in on a lucrative new demographic, but the Collier connection was suspicious. Maybe the disappearance of Danny’s body was no accident?

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to search the premises,” Diana declared.

  Grayson’s solicitous manner evaporated. “Why?” he said defensively. “Because I support Jordan Collier and his efforts to make the world a better place? That’s not a crime, at least not in Seattle.”

  “No,” she agreed, “but the improper disposal of human remains is. We don’t want to press charges, but you’d be better off cooperating with us.” She glanced at Tom. “Especially if you don’t want my partner pressing a civil suit as well.”

  Grayson blanched at the prospect, but stood his ground. “I’m afraid I value the privacy of my clients too much to compromise on this issue.” He rose from his seat and gestured toward the door. “You’re free to inspect the public areas, the viewing rooms and chapel and such, but the prep rooms and crematorium are strictly off-limits. It’s a matter of principle.”

  “Is that so?” Tom said dubiously. The mortician’s stubborn defiance, even in the face of prosecution and potential bankruptcy, suggested that he definitely had something to hide. Tom produced a folded document from beneath his jacket. “Thing is, our warrant trumps your principles.” He handed the court order, quietly obtained from one of the few judges left in Seattle who weren’t under Collier’s sway, over to Grayson. “Look it over.”

  “What?” Flustered, Grayson flipped through the document, before throwing it down onto the desktop. His face flushed with anger. “This is unconscionable!” He reached for his phone. “I need to talk to my lawyer.”

  Or maybe Jordan Collier?

  “Go ahead,” Tom said, rising from his chair to join Diana. He wondered if the recalcitrant mortician had expected Collier to shield him from any investigation. “In the meantime, we’ll be taking a look around, starting with those off-limits areas you mentioned.”

  “No! You can’t,” Grayson protested. Forgetting about the phone, he hurried out from behind his desk to detain them. “I don’t understand. What do you expect to find? I promise you, Mr. Farrell’s body is not here. Why would it be, after all these weeks?”

  “You tell me,” Tom replied. The man’s vehement objections only increased his determination to search the funeral home from top to bottom. He didn’t seriously expect to find Danny’s body on the premises, but perhaps they cou
ld find some clue pointing to what had become of it. And what, if anything, Jordan Collier had to do with it.

  “Tell you what?” The distraught undertaker looked like he was on the verge of pulling out what was left of his hair. He wrung his sweaty hands together. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. “I’ve got nothing to hide!”

  Tom tugged open the door. “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. But we’re going to need to see that for ourselves.”

  “And we’re going to need that laptop,” Diana added. Without asking permission, she confiscated the computer from Grayson’s desk. “As well as all your records concerning Danny Farrell, Delbert Ludden, and the rest of the fifty/fifty casualties.”

  Grayson gazed unhappily at his lost laptop. “But we processed hundreds of victims. Hundreds!”

  “Then you’d better get started,” Tom said.

  He and Diana exited the office, with Grayson trailing anxiously behind them. As it happened, there was a memorial service going on in one of the adjacent viewing rooms. Curious eyes turned to look at the agents. Tom felt a twinge of guilt for causing a disturbance, but they could hardly leave and come back later; that would give Grayson a chance to dispose of any incriminating evidence. They would just have to try to be discreet. All the more reason to begin downstairs, he decided.

  Bypassing the public areas, they headed for the rear of the house. A tasteful EMPLOYEES ONLY marked a staircase leading down to the basement. A locked door greeted them at the bottom of the stairs.

  Tom turned to Grayson, who was standing directly behind him on the steps. “The keys?”

  “Forget it,” the man snarled. He held out his hands, as though offering to be cuffed. “Arrest me if you want to, but I know my rights. You’re not going to get away with this.”

  Was that a threat? Once again, Tom wondered if Grayson was expecting Collier or his proxies to intervene on his behalf. That could happen, he realized, if the mortician was given a chance to contact his glorious leader. Which is why we need to get past this door now.

  Calling Grayson’s bluff, he pulled out his cuffs. “Watch him,” he instructed Diana as he shackled the man’s wrists behind his back. The middle-aged undertaker appeared to be unarmed and outnumbered, but who knew what strange ability he might possess. Bernard Grayson was not listed among the 4400, but that didn’t mean much. Thanks to fifty/fifty, there were plenty of unregistered positives in Seattle these days. For all they knew, he could spit poison from his eyes or set them on fire with a thought.

  Instead, he merely glowered as Tom frisked him for the keys. An encouraging jangle gave away their location. Tom claimed the keys and unlocked the door. “All right, let’s find out what you’re so determined to hide from us. On principle, of course.”

  Tom had never been behind the scenes at a funeral home before, but he imagined it couldn’t be too different from the morgue back at HQ. A quick scan seemed to confirm his expectations. Partitions divided the basement into three or four interconnected chambers. Refrigerated vaults kept the mortuary’s customers on ice. A geriatric corpse was laid out on a stainless-steel embalming table. A modesty cloth, draped over the cadaver’s groin, helped preserve its dignity. An embalming machine, filled with a translucent pink liquid, chugged in the background. Metal drains were embedded in the tile floor. Trocars, suture guns, loose tubing, and other tools were scattered atop various trays and counters. Glass cabinets held a variety of chemical concoctions. A white porcelain sink rested against the far wall. Overhead lights glowed brightly. Whirring exhaust fans struggled to clear the air, which smelled faintly of formaldehyde and decay. Open doorways led to adjacent chambers. Peering through a door on the right, Tom glimpsed a large steel furnace with adjustable temperature controls. A metal trolley waited to convey bodies into the cremator. Air-conditioning kept the basement several degrees cooler than the offices upstairs.

  Everything seemed in order, if somewhat unsettling, so why had Grayson put up such a fuss?

  “Tom,” Diana said urgently. “Over here.”

  She peered though an open doorway into what, at first glance, appeared to be a secondary prep room. He hurried across the chamber to join her. “What is it?”

  “Look at this equipment,” she said, pointing at an array of expensive-looking apparatus. “Centrifuges, test tubes, Petri dishes, electron microscopes, culture incubators, even a state-of-the-art DNA analyzer. Now I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure this is not standard issue for the funeral trade.” She spun around to confront Grayson, who hovered in the doorway at the foot of the stairs. “What’s the story, Mr. Grayson? You branching out into germ warfare or something?”

  The shackled mortician glared at the two agents. “I’m not saying anything. This is private property.”

  “Maybe,” Tom said, “but this looks like more than a hobby to me.” He surveyed the hidden laboratory. Was that a CAT scanner there in the corner? He wasn’t a scientist like Diana, but even he could tell that all this high-tech medical gear had nothing to do with preparing bodies for burial. “We need to take pictures of this entire setup, maybe even get Marco down to scope this out.”

  Marco Pacella was NTAC’s resident boy genius, and head of the Northwest Division’s brainstorming “Theory Room.” If he couldn’t figure out what Grayson was up to with all this equipment, no one could.

  “Or, if we trust him, Kevin Burkhoff,” Diana suggested. A biohazard label was affixed to a metal cabinet. Peeking inside the container, she found enough promicin to carry an automatic life sentence anywhere except Seattle. The greenish glow of the illegal neurotransmitter spilled out into the lab. “Okay, that’s definitely not embalming fluid.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “But what does this have to do with your nephew?”

  “That’s what I want to find out,” Tom said grimly. Stepping into the freezer room, his gaze fell on the refrigerated cabinets holding the mortuary’s nonbreathing clientele. Handwritten labels, affixed to the ends of the vaults, identified most of the occupants by name. One stack of drawers, however, were labeled only by number. On impulse, Tom grabbed on to the handle of the middle cabinet and yanked open the door. A gust of refrigerated air briefly fogged the air-conditioned atmosphere. A pair of bare feet protruded from the sheeted figure lying within the open cavity. A toe tag bore only a code number: #11.

  “Wait!” Grayson blurted. “Leave that alone.”

  You wish, Tom thought. Ignoring the undertaker’s protests, he pulled out the slab holding the figure. A thin green sheet concealed the corpse’s identity, but the size and build of the body gave him a bad feeling. Bracing himself for a shock, he peeled back the sheet.

  Danny’s face was pale and lifeless.

  “You body-snatching bastard!” Wheeling around, Tom grabbed Grayson by his lapels and threw him against the wall. “What do you want with my nephew?”

  Grayson smirked at the angry agent. His eyes gleamed with fervor. “The Great Leap Forward is not complete. Danny Farrell still has a part to play in the grand design, despite his unfortunate demise.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Tom tried to shake an answer out of his prisoner. “Talk, you goddamn ghoul!”

  “Easy, Tom!” Diana counseled him from behind. “I know you’re upset, but don’t do something you’ll regret.”

  Talk to Bernard here, he thought. He’s the one who made a big mistake here, by messing with my family. Tom wasn’t sure if Diana was playing good-cop/bad-cop here, or if she was genuinely afraid that he might lose control, but either way he wasn’t going to let up until the crooked undertaker spilled his guts about just what was going on here. It’s starting to look like Dennis was on the right track.

  But before Grayson could come clean, Tom caught a flurry of motion out of the corner of his eye. To his alarm, a young man in a lab coat lunged from behind the door at the foot of the stairs. Tom mentally kicked himself for not thoroughly clearing the basement before starting their search; he had let his personal connection to the case undermine h
is discipline. “Diana, watch out!”

  His warning came too late. The nameless employee snatched a stainless-steel tray from a counter and swung it at Diana’s head. The improvised weapon connected with a jarring impact. Diana collapsed face-first onto the tile floor. She whimpered in pain.

  “Diana!” He couldn’t tell if she was unconscious or not. Letting go of Grayson, he spun around to confront her assailant. He drew his sidearm. “Hands up! Don’t move a muscle!”

  The gangly teenager snickered at Tom’s gun, revealing a mouthful of metal braces. Acne scarred his homely face. Greasy blond bangs dangled before his eyes. Blue jeans protruded from beneath his stained white lab coat. Ignoring Tom’s order, he ran over to the embalming table and seized a nasty-looking trocar from a set of tools at the head of the table. The shiny steel needle gleamed beneath the overhead lights. He waved it in front of him like a switchblade.

  “Drop it,” Tom barked. He leveled his gun at the kid’s head. “Now.”

  “Go ahead,” Braces taunted him. “Pull the trigger.” He looked past Tom at Grayson. “Bernie, get out of here. I’ll take care of these fascist storm troopers!”

  The undertaker backed away toward the stairs. “What about you?” he called out to his partner in crime.

  “You’re more important,” Braces insisted. “The future needs you. Go!”

  Diana groaned weakly on the floor. Despite his gun, Tom felt the situation rapidly slipping out of his control. “Neither of you is going anywhere. Now put that weapon down.” He cocked the Glock semiautomatic. “This is my last warning.”

  “Oh yeah?” The teen brandished the trocar. “How’s this for a warning. Let Bernie go or your partner gets stuck like a pig!”

  He stepped menacingly toward Diana. Tom pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  “What’s the matter, big man?” Braces tapped his cranium with his free hand. “Did I mention that I can dampen chemical reactions at will? Pretty useful in the lab, and even more handy in a firefight. Your gunpowder’s no good anymore.”