Desperate Measures

by M. Glenn Graves

  “You smell anything here?” I said to him.

  He sniffed around the wall seams and then the floor. He barked once.

  Rosey stood next to me and studied the wall. Owens stood off at a distance.

  “You think this is the doorway?” he said to me.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “So, how does it open?”

  “It’s like a game of chess,” I said. “You have to outthink your opponent in order to win. You have to anticipate what your opponent will do. My daddy used to tell me that I needed to think at least three to five moves ahead and study the procession of moves which my opponent is going to utilize.”

  “Mind reading,” he said.

  “Not really. Just watching for patterns.”

  “We’re not playing chess,” Owens said as he joined us.

  “No, but the advice of anticipating what one’s opponent will do is sound. Where would Fletcher put a trigger mechanism? How would he hide it?”

  “I think that’s what’re trying to come up with, Evans,” Owens said a little aggravated.

  I turned around surveyed the room again looking for something that Fletcher would utilize. Paintings of English lords and ladies were on the walls, a large table and chairs, some artifacts from another culture were in a case, and two china cabinets across the room from each other. Nothing large stood out for me.

  I walked over to china cabinet close to Owens. I examined each shelf for something. I had no idea what it was I wanted. I would know it when I saw it. I said that to myself more than once. My mantra.

  “What are you looking for?” Owens said.

  I started to answer him, but stopped short on the third shelf down from the top.

  “I swear, Clancy Evans, if you say clue I will shoot you,” Owens said.

  “I was going to say that I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I would know it when I found it.”

  “That’s almost as obtuse as your ubiquitous clue,” Rosey chimed it.

  “I think I’ve found it,” I said.

  Rosey and Owens watched as I removed an object from the third shelf of the china cabinet. It was nearly twelve inches in height and heavy.

  “What the hell is that?” Owen said as I studied the statue of Cronus. It was made of some metal that was blackened, but it was cast in a form that had every detail cut into it, at least every detail I could recall from the photo that Rogers had sent me days ago when she researched the pipe I had described to her.

  “The thing I was looking for,” I said. “It’s a replica of Cronus or Molech.”

  I gently touched each of the features on the torso of the statue. Nothing happened. I then noticed that the bull’s head was set on the male torso with a neck seam. I turned the bull’s head and suddenly the wall and the vase of flowers and the floor beneath it rotated towards the center of the room just like in those old movies.

  “I’ll be damned,” Owens said. “Fletcher is a crazy man.”

  “Crazy smart,” I said.

  “I’m thinking wily,” Rosey said.

  66

  Once the wall revolved 180 degrees, there was sufficient space for a person to enter. Some dim light revealed a set of steps descending into the ground.

  “I need to call for backup,” Owens said as I started down the wooden steps to the underground.

  “Might be a good idea,” I said and then we all heard some ear-piercing screams coming from somewhere underground but in the distance. It sounded to me like a man screaming.

  “No time to wait on backup,” Rosey said and ran pass me down the steps.

  Sam followed on Rosey’s heels. I looked at Owens waiting to see if he would come as well. He seemed to be at a loss. He knew the correct police procedure. I also figured that he had no choice but to move down the steps and check out the blood-curdling yells now steadily coming from somewhere in the darkness below us.

  I ran ahead of Owens. Seconds later I heard him behind me. He was on his cell calling for backup.

  By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs, my eyes were beginning to adjust to the dim light around me. The temperature dropped a good five or more degrees from the room above to this basement level. It felt damp as well.

  The floor beneath us was cement. There were amber night lights high along the walls of this dark, damp, and cool-ish environment. The walls were of concrete as well and at least ten to twelve feet high. It reminded me of my Great Aunt Nona’s old house in Clancyville with its high ceilings and extensive wall space. Of course most of time there was spent when I was a child and everything in those days seemed larger than it does now. Perspective, no doubt.

  We were following the long concrete tunnel from where we had landed at the bottom of the steps. There had been no other option. No doors, no other tunnels, nothing but this long cement creation where we found ourselves. The tunnel was about six feet wide.

  The amber lights aided our trek through this subterranean world of damp cold. I thought it was getting colder.

  The screams echoed all around us as we continued moving closer to the source. Rosey began to jog. Owens tried to follow suit, but gave up after fifty feet or so. Sam and I kept pace but stayed behind. I wanted to keep an eye on Owens. I was walking at a brisk pace, but was beginning to distance myself from Owens. Too many doughnuts and not enough exercise kept him from keeping pace with us. His breathing was labored as well.

  The long concrete tunnel finally ended and we were now in a spacious room underground a good hundred yards or more from the house. The walls were still concrete but were twice as tall as the tunnel walls. The amber night lights had changed to normal bulbs which aligned all four walls every five feet or so. It was sufficient to light the massive room.

  We had come upon a rather strange world indeed.

  The room appeared to be square, each wall some twenty to twenty-five feet long. On the far wall directly across from our entrance point, there stood a statue at least twelve feet high. I recognized it from the photos Rogers found of the ancient Canaanite deity Molech. The arms of the statue were extended in front of the face of Molech and lowered as if waiting for something to be placed on it. The idea of sacrifice crossed my mind for obvious reasons. The statue appeared to be made of some type of stone and covered with a shiny substance. It was the color of gold.

  A huge fire was burning inside the belly of the statue of Molech, but the arms-altar was empty of any imminent offering for the god.

  My examination of our surroundings was interrupted by the shrieking which erupted louder now that we were presumably closer to the source. I don’t think the screams had actually stopped. I think rather I had become immune to the sound and was suddenly reawakened once more to a different pitch.

  I turned into the direction of the human agony. Two large crosses were stationed against a far wall to our right, tangent to the altar for the bull-man god, Molech. Two bodies were attached to the crosses.

  Owens had finally caught up with us. The four of us moved towards the two crosses. As we approached I was able to identify the two people bound securely to the crosses. Lenny was on one, but judging from his appearance, he was not long for this world. He was not the one screaming. My shock was the person who was attached to the other cross. Very much alive and yet no doubt fading quickly, he was the one screaming for his life.

  The screams were coming from Reginald Fletcher, His Holiness, the High Priest of The Church of Real End.

  The room was like some vast chamber with the walls, floor and ceiling made of concrete. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all black. Except for the gigantic statue of Molech and the two crosses adjacent to it, the only other objects in the cavernous room were a small group of chairs back behind us on the left side of the large chamber. Behind the chairs appeared to be small rooms, each with a door.

  Blood was dripping down from various points on Fletcher’s body. There didn’t seem to be any mortal wound inflicted upon him that I could discern, but he was definitely suffering at th
e hands of the person standing between the two mounted crosses on the wall. We could the back of the person.

  With a sword in hand, Sandy Chatterworth turned and faced the four of us as we approached. Sam, about fifteen or twenty feet away from her, was the closest. Rosey, Owens, and I were a good ten feet behind Sam.

  “They are the murderers,” Sandy said.

  She was wearing some kind of regal garment that sported a long, black cape. When she turned to face us, I could see that the lining of the cape was purple. Her black gown was touching the floor so I could not see any footwear. It was a moot point at the present.

  “I need you to put down the sword,” Owens said as he moved slowly towards her.

  With Owens directive, Sandy moved one or two steps closer to us. Her back was now to Fletcher and Lenny.

  “Get me down from here!” he yelled at us. “I need medical attention!”

  “Drop the sword, Sandy,” I said, following along Owens order.

  It seemed like the first thing that needed to be done in order for us to help Fletcher. I wasn’t so much keen on rescuing such a scumbag, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

  “He killed my mother,” she said.

  Sandy seemed to be in a daze. It was as if she was in a trance or drugged. Hard to tell which.

  “When did you discover this?” I said to her.

  Owens took a step or two towards Sandy. A direct frontal position. Rosey moved slowly in an arc on her right side. I took a step to the left in an effort to divert her eyes from Rosey’s maneuver.

  It didn’t work. Her eyes caught Rosey’s movement.

  “You should stay there,” she said to Rosey.

  He immediately stopped moving towards her.

  “I just found out,” she said to me. “All these years I thought she had abandoned us, gone away, moved to another state to take care of my grandparents. He lied to me about what happened to her.”

  “How did you find out?” I said.

  “I confronted Lee about killing Raney. He was angry at me and told me it was for the greater good. Things had to be done for the greater good, for Molech. I told him that I had loved Raney, that Raney loved me and that I had a life with him. He laughed at me and told me I was being stupid, a romantic idiot. Can you believe he called me that? He said that our mother was the same way … that Daddy had to get rid of her because of her romantic notions. He told me that I was just like my mother.”

  “So he told you that Fletcher had her killed?” I said.

  “No, that’s not what he told me. He told me that he killed her,” she said and pointed at Fletcher with the long sword. “My dear old daddy killed my mother. Burned her alive, at least that’s what Lee said. I think he was trying to shock me back into the fold by telling me the god-awful truth. Burned her alive, a sacrifice for the greater good. Crap, I tell you. It’s all crap.”

  “Put down the sword,” Owens said again. He was now standing a little closer to her, maybe ten feet away.

  “He deserves to die for what he has done,” she said.

  “Help me! She’s crazy!” Fletcher yelled from his cross position.

  “Perhaps he does deserve to die,” I said to Sandy, “but it’s not your place to inflict that judgment on him.”

  “Then who? Who will verify the insanity of all this religious crap? He told me I was to be the priestess and that I would reign with him. He said I would be the mother of the next generation. He had me believing all of that crap. Then he replaced me, or tried to. He brought in Melody, my friend. I had recruited her for the church and he tried to replace me with her. Can you imagine that? Everything he told me was nothing but lies. Lies, lies, and more lies.”

  She was losing whatever control she seemed to possess when we encountered her just moments ago.

  “So you did what you had to do, right?” I said to her.

  She seemed puzzled by my statement. Her eyes fell on the floor around her. She held the sword tightly. It was a strange looking sword to me. It was a single edged weapon with a curved blade. There was a small tip on the end of it where the bottom sharp blade met the unsharpened top. The tip had some blood stains. I deduced that the blood likely belonged to both Lenny and Fletcher. We detectives are good at what we do.

  “I convinced Lee to help me sacrifice her. I had to get her out of the way. The irony is that she would have not been the high priestess at all. Seems that she was pregnant. Isn’t that one for the books? Funny, somehow. Pregnant. But, I didn’t know that at the time. So, Lee and I sacrificed her.”

  “How did you do that? It appeared to be suicide,” I said.

  “Yeah, that was Lee’s idea. He’s so clever. So clever. Look at him, hanging there. Clever man, clever brother. He’s dead, you know. Won’t be clever anymore.”

  A sinister smile appeared on her face as she spoke of Lenny. I noted that she never referred to him by his new name, only by the name she knew growing up as a child. I suppose that he would always be Lee to her, alive or dead.

  “How did your clever brother make it appear to be a suicide?”

  “Drugged her with some concoction and then he easily hypnotized her. She was like a stupid zombie or something. She would do whatever he wanted. It was fun to watch him work on her. Had her doing things, well, I wouldn’t have done the things she did, drugged or not. Anyhow, once she was in his power, well, it was easy to set it up and watch the show.”

  My stomach churned with her story. I thought I might throw up. It was the first time I had that sensation since the day I found my father dead in our driveway. I ran from inside my house in Clancyville into the driveway that morning when I heard the rapid fire of guns. The nausea I was feeling at that moment brought back that alarming image. I swallowed hard and put my left hand over my mouth just in case. I forced my mind to think of something else. Just then Fletcher screamed again and the nausea began to pass.

  Detecting as a profession does have some downsides. One can often discover how despicable human beings can be. I am often discouraged at man’s inhumanity to man. Discouraged is not the half of it. Disgusted. Fed up. No wonder I was surly much of the time.

  “One more time, Sandy,” Owens said. “I need you to put the sword on the floor and step away from it. I will shoot you if you do not do what I say. Do it now.”

  I was amazed at how calm Owens remained thus far. I could tell that he was dead serious about shooting her, but he was so calm with his manner, his words, his whole body. Amazing.

  “I need to finish what I have started her. They both have to die and then be purged. It’s what they believed, or said as much. Purging, well, it’s a purification rite as much as a sacrifice to this bull of a god here. I need to finish it,” she said and turned to look at the two hanging in front of her.

  Rosey was close enough to move in on Sandy. He was also quick enough to do it without her being able to brandish the sword and inflict any injury on him. Cat-quick, the man was. I loved him for his bravery and skill. I knew what he was going to do before he did it, but his quickness still took my breath.

  He embraced Sandy with both arms so that she could not move. The sword was still in her hand, hanging by her side. Owens moved quickly to take the sharp weapon from her hand. While they still had her restrained, Owens took out his handcuffs and bound her hands behind her back. He then repeated her Miranda rights as if he had done that a time or two in his long career.

  I moved towards Fletcher to see how I could get him down and help the poor soul. A part of me wanted to leave him hanging there to suffer a little more. He had caused so much suffering in his lifetime that I felt like it was due recompense for him to enjoy some pain for a little longer.

  Compassion in a detective can be a fatal flaw. At least it can lead to some dangerous situations for the one who shows it. Like a tragic hero in a Shakespearean play, I was doomed with the curse of having compassion. I couldn’t decide from which side of the family my curse originated. Probably didn’t matter. A curse is a curse.r />
  I moved to help him.

  “Stop!” Rosey yelled. “I think Little Sister had a plan B.”

  67

  Rosey was standing by my side and pointing to a wire that ran along one of the small grooves in the cement floor. The wire was a few inches off of the floor waiting for someone like me to walk into it and set into motion something I couldn’t stop.

  “How on earth did you see that?” I said.

  “Training.”

  “Never goes away, huh,” I said.

  “Once a S.E.A.L. …,” he said and pulled me gently back from my proximity to the wire.

  Fletcher was begging for us to get him down from the cross.

  “Some kind of trigger wire?” I said.

  “I’d bet my life on it.”

  “It could be something else,” I said.

  “It could be lots of things, but in my line of work, I don’t take chances. It’s there for a reason. You might not even have to touch it in order to activate it.”

  “Motion activated?” I said.

  “Could be that if someone gets within an inch, or just steps over it, whatever is to happen at that point will happen.”

  “Help me, for crying out loud,” Fletcher said. “If you have any humanity, you will get me down. This pain is unbearable.”

  “We’re working on it. Do you know anything about your daughter’s backup plan?”

  Fletcher continued to scream and didn’t answer Rosey’s question.

  “This wire here,” Rosey pointed to the floor in front of Fletcher’s cross. “How does it work?”

  “Connected to a battery,” he grimaced more. “Creates a spark and sets the cross on fire if it is crossed over or… ahhh … touched.”

  “Where’s the battery?” Rosey said.

  “Behind me, behind the wall. You can’t get back there,” Fletcher said. “You can’t get to the battery without crossing the wire. It circles me.”

  “So how do we get him down from his cross?” I said to Rosey.

  Rosey studied the way that Fletcher was bound to the cross. Sandy had used multiple ropes and chains. The faint order of kerosene made it obvious to us that once the fire started, it would burn with rapid heat making it intense and difficult to extinguish. Also making it impossible to quickly release Fletcher from his captivity.