The Pawn

by Steven James

  “You know the words, but do you understand them?”

  A slight hesitation. “I believe so.”

  Kincaid walked past the window to the array of framed photographs on the wall. He gazed into the smiling, playful faces in the pictures. “David, we are sowing beliefs, and we must all make sacrifices when we choose to follow our beliefs. You know this, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have to be ready to pay the price that our beliefs demand of us.” Kincaid paused and ran his finger along the cheek of one of the African-American girls in the photograph. He remembered her. Ananda, a Hindu name meaning “ultimate bliss.” She’d played tag with him in the jungle back when they were children, back before she drank the medication. Before she laid down in the pavilion and began to twitch.

  She was one of the children who did not die quickly.

  “David, do you know why there is no shortage of suicide bombers in the Middle East?”

  David didn’t answer quickly. He seemed to weigh his words carefully, as if he were afraid he might let his master down. “Because their hatred runs so deep, Father?”

  “No, David. Because their beliefs run so deep. Hatred is the result of beliefs. It is the fruit that falls from the tree of faith. So is love. Beliefs always come first. To change the fruit, you must change the tree; you must change the beliefs. A tree will always bring forth its own fruit. It will never do otherwise. The great prophet once said, ‘Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.’”

  “Jesus, the Nazarene?”

  “Yes. The Nazarene.”

  52

  Ralph, Lien-hua, and I ended up talking about Bethanie’s murder and the White Night angle for a few minutes, but then Ralph said, “Wait, we need to stay on track here. What else happened down there in the jungle, Lien-hua? Anything else that might help us with this case?”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, it’s with the assassination of Congressman Ryan that the conspiracy theories really begin. I wonder if they might be connected.”

  “What conspiracy theories?” I asked.

  “Bob Brown, an NBC photojournalist who was killed on the airstrip at Port Kaituma, got some video of the shooters. Some people who’ve analyzed the tape say the assassins were lined up in a military formation. The government has always maintained that the shooters were guards from Peoples Temple, but it was never confirmed. Eight years later one of the surviving temple members was tried and convicted for his involvement, but a lot of people think he was only a scapegoat. It went deeper than just one man.”

  I thought back to what Terry had told me about Governor Taylor. That he’d been stationed in South America during the Jonestown massacre. That he’d been a government agent at the time. “Could it have been a government job? A professional hit?” I asked her.

  Lien-hua had almost finished her rice. She nodded slowly. “Actually, some people think it was. Ryan was no friend of the CIA. A couple years earlier—I think it was in ’74—he’d co-sponsored a bill that required the CIA to report classified activities to Congress. At the time of his death he had another bill on the floor of Congress pushing for more restrictions. Two weeks after he was killed, the bill died in committee.”

  “OK, now this is getting intense,” said Ralph.

  “There’s more,” said Lien-hua. “The CIA had a top-secret psychosocial mind-control experiment going on back in the 1970s called MK-ULTRA. Supposedly, it was ended the year Jones moved to Guyana.”

  “Nice coincidence,” said Ralph.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” I said. “Mind control?”

  “A combination of drugs, hypnosis, sleep deprivation, isolation, water-boarding, threats, brainwashing, social pressuring. The CIA has always been interested in seeing what it takes to break someone’s will.”

  “Well, even if the CIA was involved,” I said, “those people in Jonestown weren’t robots. They made their choice.”

  “Wait,” said Ralph. “Lien-hua, you said some of the people were murdered. Has that ever been confirmed?”

  “At first the coroner said the cause of death for the people in Jonestown was cyanide by injection. He came to that conclusion after examining numerous victims with needle marks between the shoulders—the only place on your body where you can’t inject yourself. About a week later he changed the official records to indicate they all died by ingesting the cyanide, and that’s been the official story ever since—even though firsthand accounts record needle marks on the hands, necks, arms, and backs of the deceased.”

  “So someone had a little talk with Mr. Coroner?” said Ralph.

  “Maybe. No one knows. According to one account, at least 187 bodies had needle marks, then they just stopped counting. You don’t get needle marks between your shoulder blades from drinking cyanide-laced fruit punch.”

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “All personal identification was removed from the bodies before they were returned to the U.S. No one knows why. And only seven autopsies were performed—out of 909 bodies—914 if you count the congressman and reporters.”

  “This is unbelievable,” I said.

  “It’s history,” she responded. “You can look it up. Then in the weeks and months following the massacre, a number of families were found dead in the U.S.—mostly ex-Temple members, some government officials with ties to Jones, a few CIA agents. According to one report, sixteen of the Green Berets that were assigned to remove the bodies from Jonestown committed suicide within three months of the tragedy. That, and there have always been murky ties between Jones and the CIA.”

  “Spies, mind control, assassins, a suicide cult, a massive government cover-up . . .” said Ralph. “Whew . . . this would make one killer video game.”

  Lien-hua and I just looked at him and shook our heads.

  “What?” he said sheepishly. “It would.”

  “So anyway,” I said to Lien-hua, “do people actually believe this stuff?”

  “Some very influential people believe this stuff.”

  “And what do you think?”

  She took a deep breath. “Truth is, no one knows how many died willingly that day. There were armed gunmen surrounding the pavilion carrying AK-47s. Jones’s followers were isolated, territorial, paranoid about the government, and, for the most part, loyal to him. You choose—do you want a bullet in the back, or do you join the rest of your family and closest friends and give your children the ‘medication’? Do you try to fight off the whole community, or let someone you love press a needle against your arm? For most of them, it was at least coerced suicide, if not murder.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Does the term Q875 mean anything to you? Terry said it was a tape of some kind.”

  She tapped her fingers on the table thoughtfully. “Well, that would make sense. Jones liked to record himself. The government found hundreds of his messages—talks, sermons, whatever you want to call them. When the FBI went in to clean up the place, they collected all the tapes and archived them. Then, back in 2000 or 2001 most of them became available to the public through a Freedom of Information Act request.”

  “We need to listen to that tape,” I said to Ralph.

  “Turn on your computer,” said Lien-hua. “It’s probably on the Internet.”

  While I searched online, she continued, “Speaking of tapes and Jonestown and the CIA, Jones actually recorded his final talk as he convinced all the people to die together. It’s called the Death Tape. I listened to it when I was doing his profile. Very creepy. He called their action ‘revolutionary suicide.’ Anyway, on that tape, he tells his men to get Dwyer out of there, meaning away from the pavilion.” “Who’s Dwyer?” asked Ralph.

  “Richard Dwyer was an official in the American Embassy in the city of Georgetown, Guyana. By nearly all accounts he was a CIA operative sent to infiltrate Peoples Temple. Although when he was asked about it later during the congressional investigation, he sa
id, ‘No comment.’”

  “Unbelievable,” I mumbled. “There’s even evidence a CIA agent was there when it all started.”

  As it turns out, we didn’t have to search far to find tape Q875. Someone had posted it online. I downloaded the audio file, hit play. It was chilling. Throughout the tape you could hear radio announcers in the background talking about Congressman Ryan’s death and the rumors of mass suicide the day before at Jonestown.

  The day before.

  Which meant Q875 had been recorded on November 19, 1978. The day after everyone at Jonestown was already dead.

  We listened to the whole thing. Twice.

  Then again.

  Static . . . a radio announcer talking about the tragedy . . . a chair squeaking . . . a few voices in the background, someone saying “Shh!” . . . the sound of people moving around, opening and closing drawers . . . someone sneezing . . . an announcer mentioning that there would be autopsies performed on Ryan and the others, and then the garbled sound of one of the people there in the cabin muttering curses . . . more news reports about Jonestown . . . someone saying “Shut up!” . . . a screen door slamming . . . static.

  “That is very, very eerie,” said Lien-hua. “Whoever made this tape did it with nearly one thousand corpses lying nearby.”

  “I wonder if they’ve ever done a voice analysis on it,” I said.

  Ralph shook his head. “Speech segments are too short.”

  “So this tape was recorded on November 19”—I was thinking aloud—“the day after everyone supposedly died. Why?”

  “What I wanna know,” said Ralph, “is if everyone at Jonestown died on the 18th, who made the tape?”

  “What tape?” asked someone in the doorway.

  We turned.

  Margaret.

  Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid, the Father, the Master, removed a black and white photograph of three smiling children from the wall. A blowing ocean of wheat fields stretched behind them and ended at the base of a lush jungle. He tilted the photograph in the gentle, dancing candlelight. These children had been waiting in line when he ran into the jungle. Even now, thirty years later, he remembered their names: Jacob and Isaiah and Emilia. He remembered seeing them giggling and teasing each other as they waited for their turn to drink from the vat, just like schoolchildren might do while waiting in line beside the drinking fountain at recess.

  “We are not committing suicide,” Kincaid remembered hearing Jim Jones say as the people lined up. “It’s a revolutionary act. To me death is not a fearful thing, it’s living that’s treacherous.”

  Living is treacherous.

  Kincaid turned to David. “We are in the business of sowing beliefs. And we must be ready for whatever fruit those beliefs produce. Both in our lives and in the lives of those we teach.” He put the picture down next to one of the candles.

  “Yes, Father.” David’s voice rang with resolve.

  Kincaid knew that David was a true believer. He had already made significant sacrifices, had already proven his devotion. Yes. Kincaid was proud of his son.

  “And do you know the rest of the verse, David? The rest of the words of the Nazarene?”

  A short pause and then, “No, Father. Forgive me.”

  “‘A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.’ Matthew chapter seven.” As he said the words he stared intently at the photograph. Then he turned to look at his pupil. “We are about to cast the tree that does not bear good fruit into the fire. The corrupt tree cannot be allowed to grow any longer.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Kincaid set the picture back on the shelf. “I’ll join the others soon, David. Tell them to begin with the children.”

  “Yes, Father.” Then, without another word, David bowed deeply and backed out of the room.

  Kincaid watched him go. Yes, beliefs bring forth fruit, and now the whole world would see the depth of his beliefs. The media elite and the United States government would taste for themselves the bitter fruit they had sown when they hunted down, harassed, and then defamed his family.

  For a few more moments he watched the candlelight flicker and reflect. Flicker and reflect. Illuminating his faces of the children.

  Then he blew out the candles so that he was once again alone in the darkness, with the stars blinking at him through the night. A family of daggers puncturing the sky. How many stars were in the sky, he did not know: to him there were 909—one of each family member who died in the jungle.

  Always 909 points of light piercing the darkness.

  Then, he reached up with his hand and felt his shoulder, the scar that had started it all.

  Some scars are meant to be caressed forever.

  53

  Ralph worked at briefing Margaret while I slipped off by myself to get some work done on the revised geo profile. We had twice as much work to do now. The case had split in half: we had the Jonestown angle and the yellow ribbon guy. It’s supposed to get easier the more you work on these things, not harder.

  I eliminated Alexis and Bethanie from the equation and reworked the numbers. The results weren’t bipolar this time. New hot spots appeared, much more focused. New names floated to the top of the tip list.

  And Grolin’s was one of them. He moved up from 113 to 8.

  I tried to remind myself that my role in this case was to help focus the investigation, not nab one specific suspect, but it didn’t really help. I wanted to get this guy. When he brought my daughter into it, he made it personal. Her life might be in danger. I hated to think what he might do to Tessa if he ever got his hands on her.

  Also I wasn’t too happy that he tried to blow me up.

  In addition, we still had no leads on where the rest of Jolene’s body might be. I was almost afraid to find out. I decided to follow up on the possibility that someone on the team was the copycat killer. I brought up the names of everyone who had access to the case files and medical examiner reports and found sixty-two names. Wonderful.

  Ralph stalked over to my desk.

  “How’s Margaret doing?” I asked.

  “Shell-shocked, but I didn’t say so,” said Ralph.

  “Gotcha.”

  He shook his head. “She told me she’s going to take care of investigating this cult.”

  “What?” I said. I noticed Lien-hua coming over to join us.

  “Yeah, it was kind of strange. When I told her about the tape and the connection to Bethanie and the governor, she said we would need someone running point on that part of the investigation and she wanted to do it. Told me she wants us to focus on bringing Grolin in.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a little odd to you?” asked Lien-hua.

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Pat?”

  “Hard to say. She might want some distance from the guy who put the body in her trunk. Maybe this will help her deal with it. Maybe it just seems like the right political move. Who knows.”

  “In any case,” Ralph continued, “she mentioned that earlier this afternoon Brent interviewed Grolin’s girlfriend, a nurse named”—he consulted his notepad—“Vanessa Mueller. Brent said she was acting suspicious, really jumpy. Vanessa said she has no idea where Grolin is, but Brent’s been following her all afternoon just in case.”

  “So that’s where he’s been all day,” I said.

  “Yeah. So here’s what I’m thinking. Tomorrow we can work with Margaret and see where this whole Jonestown angle takes us, but if there’s any chance we can bring Grolin in now, I think that’s where we should focus our efforts.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “He’s the immediate threat, especially if he’s going to go after the woman with the red hair.”

  “That reminds me,” said Lien-hua, “I talked to Brent earlier. They’re still working on those prints. We should have them in sometime tomorrow.”

  “That might not be soon enough,” said Ralph. “Since we don’t know who
the next victim is yet, I think we should stake out the girlfriend’s place tonight. See if Grolin shows up.”

  “Good call,” I said.

  Ralph scratched at the late-day stubble on his chin. “Only problem is, Wallace’s men are stretched thin—there’s a music festival just outside of town tonight, and the Network of Concerned Evangelicals doesn’t like the bands. They’ve announced they’re going to protest and—”

  “I could do it,” said Agent Lien-hua.

  “Huh?”

  “The stakeout.”

  “You’re not here to sit around on stakeouts.”

  “Um, I could work the stakeout with Agent Jiang,” I said.

  He looked at me quizzically. “Neither are you.”

  “No, it’s all right,” I said. “It’ll give me a quiet place to think things through. Besides, I had a nap this afternoon. I’ll be fine.”

  He still looked hesitant, but then he yawned. He’d been going nonstop all day. Just the mention of a stakeout seemed to make him more tired. “Well, I guess that’ll work.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “All right. Take nine to midnight—that way you can still get a little sleep later on. I’ll get Wallace to find someone for the late shift. After all, you are driving to Charlotte tomorrow morning.”

  I nodded.

  “Coordinate it all with Tucker,” he said. “You want mic patches?” Ralph was always trying out the military’s new toys. The high-tech mic patches came from some of his friends in the army. Special ops. Each patch is nearly transparent and the size of a plastic strip bandage. You wear it just beneath your ear; it works as both a transmitter and a receiver. It also emits a long-range homing beacon. Very sleek, high-end stuff. Problem is, the digital router automatically records everything you say. And I wasn’t sure I wanted that on this particular stakeout.

  “Naw, twentieth-century walkie-talkies,” I said, “if that’s OK by you?”

  He shrugged. “Fine with me.” Yawned again. “I need some sleep.”

  “Go play some video games,” I said.

  His eyes lit up. “Yeah. I could do that.” He nodded. “All right. So Tucker can run point from here, and we’ll notify the police department to have a couple cars on standby in case anything goes down.”