Bad Faith bkamc-24

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Jaxon glanced over at where Lucy had been standing when the shooting started and was horrified to see her lying on the deck, bleeding from an apparent shoulder wound. She was trying to help a NIDSA agent who lay motionless on the ground next to her, a pool of blood growing beneath him. Blanchett looked over at the same time and stopped shooting.

  “I’ve got her, Ned,” Jaxon yelled, and ran to Lucy even as more automatic rifle fire raked the ferry, clanging off steel and whistling overhead.

  “I’m okay,” Lucy yelled. “Just nicked.” She looked back at the agent she’d been trying to help. “But I think he’s gone.”

  Blanchett’s expression turned from concern to anger as he nodded and began to shoot again, the big gun’s bullets punching hole after hole into the cruiser’s cabin and taking out gunmen whenever they appeared.

  The battle ended as quickly as it began. Thousands of rounds had been exchanged, and the cabin cruiser was again dead in the water, only now there was black smoke pouring from it and a small fire was visible in the rear. The men on board had stopped shooting, though none could be seen.

  Ascertaining that Lucy was not in any immediate danger from her wound, Jaxon moved to the railing and studied the terrorist vessel through his binoculars. He was still watching when a man on the cruiser dove into the water and another man ran to the rail and shot the diver. Blanchett immediately dispatched the shooter.

  The Coast Guard vessel swept in closer. “Throw down your weapons and raise your hands,” a voice demanded over the gunboat’s loudspeakers.

  Jaxon saw several men start to comply. He and everyone else around him began to relax as the police vessels cautiously moved toward the terrorists. Resistance appeared to be over.

  Lucy, who’d picked herself up and was listening in again, yelled, “They want to surrender! I think-”

  Suddenly, the terrorist boat erupted in a massive fireball that also consumed the police vessel closest to it. The heat and concussion could be felt on the ferry, still fifty yards away. Then all that remained was debris, some of which was still falling out of the sky, and small oil fires on the surface of the water. There were no signs of any survivors.

  Jaxon heard the ferry door behind him open and turned to see Capers leading Malovo out, joined by Rolles and her partner, Masterson. “They do that or us?” Capers asked.

  “Them,” Jaxon replied. “We weren’t shooting when it happened.” He slapped his hand on the railing. “Damn it, I would have liked to take those guys in and see if we could get them to talk. This was pretty sophisticated, media-savvy planning, and I’d like to know who was behind it.”

  Malovo, who’d been looking with satisfaction at the debris on the water, shrugged. “Good riddance, no?” she said. “Besides, maybe the other two will be able to tell you something.” Capers turned to Malovo, who was looking at the fires burning on the water with a satisfied grin. The assassin laughed. “There’s just something about death that turns me on,” she purred. “Is it the same for you?” she asked, turning to meet Capers’s gaze.

  Eyes blazing, Capers swung Malovo around and cuffed her wrists behind her. “Yeah, well, you’re going to have to take care of that all by yourself in a cell tonight.”

  Malovo laughed again. “It would not be the first time, my beautiful friend, but perhaps someday we can let the men yell while we help each other with such things?”

  “Not on your life,” Capers shot back. “There wouldn’t be enough hot water in the world to get the stench off.”

  The smile disappeared from Malovo’s face for a moment, but then her eyes glittered and she grinned. “Perhaps someday we will take a shower together and find out, no?”

  As they disappeared into the interior of the ferry, Jaxon looked over at Lucy, who was frowning and looking at the water where the terrorist boat had been. “What is it, Lucy?” he asked as he walked over.

  “I’m not sure,” she replied. “I’ll talk to you about it later.”

  Late that afternoon, Jaxon arrived in a dark sedan at a private entrance on the Hogan Place side of the Criminal Courts Building in downtown Manhattan. Clay Fulton was waiting for him there and escorted him to the elevator. They took it to the eighth floor and the anteroom that led directly into the inner office of the New York district attorney.

  “I take it you’ve seen the news,” Jaxon said when he opened the door and saw Karp waiting for him.

  “Yeah, caught it this morning and a few dozen replays since,” Karp replied. “Just got back from Beth Israel Hospital. Lucy’s lucky the bullet didn’t hit any organs or major blood vessels.” He paused for a few moments. “So everything went down like you told me it was going to.”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” Jaxon responded. “I was hoping we could take more prisoners.”

  “What’s the body count?” Karp asked.

  “Not sure on their side, maybe a dozen,” Jaxon responded. “We lost five police officers, two more badly burned, and one federal agent-the guy who’d been next to Lucy. Also, the pilot of the news helicopter is in serious condition, though the reporter seems to have gotten away with nothing worse than a dunking.”

  “Could have been worse,” Karp noted.

  “Much worse,” Jaxon agreed. “If we weren’t able to intercept these guys, it would have been a catastrophe. Hundreds dead. A big public-relations coup for al-Qaeda.”

  “So we owe Malovo our thanks?” Karp asked, shaking his head.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Jaxon replied. “She’s looking out for number one, herself.”

  “I’d rather be prosecuting her for murder and putting her on death row,” Karp said.

  “I won’t argue with you there.”

  “You know she can’t be trusted.”

  Jaxon sighed and nodded. “Funny, but you’re not the first one to say that to me today.”

  8

  “Honey?” David Ellis called out as he entered the tiny apartment on West 88th Street. There was no answer, nor sound of any kind aside from street noise outside. The shades in the living room were drawn, the windows closed, adding to the gloom and stillness.

  She’s probably napping, he thought as he stood for a moment in the entranceway before closing the door behind him. Nonie, his wife, napped a lot and had ever since Micah died. And when she wasn’t asleep, she walked around as if in a daze and spoke in a monotone devoid of any emotion. The only time her voice was animated at all was when she talked about the Reverend C. G. Westlund, or if David said something that irked her, particularly if it could be construed as critical of the reverend.

  In fact, Westlund was the reason David had feigned an illness at his job as a computer programmer so that he could come home and talk to his wife about her obsession with the man and their trial, which would start with jury selection in two days. He would have waited to talk until that evening after work, but when he got home she would usually already be in bed, or would soon rush out of the apartment to attend a church meeting or some other business with Westlund and wouldn’t come home until late, after he’d gone to bed. Awake, he’d listen to her slip quietly into the apartment and then would hear the door leading to their son’s old room, where she slept, click shut.

  It had been a long time since they’d slept in the same bed, a fact he’d even once brought up with Westlund after Micah’s death, when he still thought of the reverend as a friend and spiritual guide. When he complained that his wife refused to have sex with him, Westlund had counseled him to be patient. Women whose children “are taken into the arms of God” often lose their sex drive as they grieve, the reverend advised. “Give her time,” he said.

  However, time had only seen his marriage go from bad to worse, and he now considered the reverend a big part of the problem. When he complained to Nonie that she should be turning to him, her husband, when she needed consoling, she bitterly retorted, “The reverend is the only person who understands me.” She wouldn’t come right out and say it, but she implied that Micah would not have died if David
’s faith had been stronger. And he knew where that was coming from.

  More and more frequently she referred to Westlund by his first name, Charles, and his effect on her mood was increasingly evident. Alone in their marriage bed at night, David sometimes wondered if there was something more going on between his wife and Westlund than spiritual guidance. But his mind recoiled at the thought of such a betrayal.

  He’d met Nonie at Tennessee Christian College when he was a senior computer science major and she was a junior studying early childhood development. She’d been the prettiest girl he’d ever met, with a nice smile and a laugh he could hear in his mind even when she was gone. He’d fallen in love, and to his surprise and delight, when he finally worked up the nerve to tell her after they’d been dating for four months, she confessed that she loved him, too.

  They’d been married shortly after that and though they’d both been virgins, he believed that they enjoyed their sex life. But not anymore, voices whispered to him from the dark corners of the master bedroom on sleepless nights. Perhaps she is enjoying it with someone else. He tried to shut the voices off, but they only grew louder each time she spoke Westlund’s name with the tenderness she’d once used when saying his.

  They’d met the Reverend C. G. Westlund shortly after Micah’s first series of treatments for brain tumors had ended at the Elvis Presley Memorial Children’s Hospital in their hometown of Memphis. The holy man’s timing could not have been better.

  Several months earlier, the Ellises’ beautiful blond-haired, green-eyed, then-eight-year-old son had started complaining about headaches that as time passed were often accompanied by nausea and vomiting. They’d taken him to a pediatrician, who diagnosed migraines and suggested bed rest “in a quiet dark room” whenever he felt a headache coming on. The diagnosis changed when Micah began to say that sometimes when his head hurt, he had a difficult time seeing.

  They began to doubt the doctor when their formerly athletic little boy seemed to lose coordination in his muscles, stumbling for no apparent reason and regressing in some of his fine motor skills, such as writing. Then one night, standing with his parents in the kitchen of their small home in East Memphis, Micah grabbed his head as he cried out and then collapsed to the floor. His body went rigid, arching and racked by muscle spasms as though he was being electrocuted; his eyes bugged out from his head and froth appeared around his mouth as he made strange guttural sounds.

  After an evening in the ER of Memphis General Hospital, Micah had been transferred to the state-of-the-art Elvis Presley Memorial Children’s Hospital, where an MRI of his brain revealed a type of brain tumor the pediatric oncologist who spoke to them afterward called an astrocytoma. The doctor had gently explained that there were two types of astrocytomas: nonmalignant, noncancerous tumors, and malignant tumors, which were cancerous. Although both types could affect the brain’s functions, such as coordination, the cancerous tumors would spread and eventually result in death. And Micah’s were cancerous.

  The doctor had explained the possible treatment options. The preferred method was to remove the tumors surgically, he said. However, due to the location of Micah’s tumors, deep inside the cerebellum, and the way they had integrated with normal brain cells, he felt the surgery was too risky “except as a last resort.” He believed that the best course of action was chemotherapy, in which Micah would be given drugs that specifically targeted fast-growing cells, such as cancer cells, and destroyed them. The drawback was that they could expect “significant” side effects because the drugs also attacked fast-growing “normal” cells such as hair, stomach, intestine, and blood cells. The results could include nausea, vomiting, hair loss, fatigue, anemia, and muscle/nerve pain, about which the doctor told them, “You as an adult would probably describe it as the absolute worst flu ever, so bad you might wish you were dead. And of course, it can be even worse for a frightened child.”

  And that wasn’t all the bad news. The chemotherapy would be followed up with radiation treatment, “probably once a day, five days a week, for as long as seven weeks.” Again, there were side effects, many of them the same as for the chemotherapy, as well as a potential for what the doctor euphemistically called an “intellectual decrease” and damage to Micah’s pituitary gland, “which could affect his growth.”

  Worse, the doctor couldn’t guarantee that one chemotherapy/radiation treatment would be enough. “Sometimes the first treatment doesn’t quite get it done, or even the second. We have to go after this thing until it is completely gone, or it will just come back.”

  It all sounded so frightening, the proverbial “cure is worse than the disease” scenario. However, the doctor had cautioned them that without treatment, Micah would die … and soon. “With treatment, we have an eighty percent survival rate of at least five years,” the doctor noted, which didn’t sound great, but it was better than death.

  So they’d signed the consent forms to have Micah treated. As predicted, the chemotherapy drugs and first round of radiation made Micah’s life, and theirs, a living hell.

  As they’d watched their boy suffer, the Ellises prayed, begging for mercy and compassion. Although their attendance at church had fallen off considerably since their college days at a Christian school, they were both people of faith. He’d been raised a Southern Baptist, and Nonie had been brought up in the Pentecostal church, which included faith healing-healing by prayer and “laying on of the hands”-among its main tenets. So when the tall, handsome preacher-back then he’d been called John LaFontaine-with the striking blue eyes; deep, smooth voice; and long brown hair showed up on their doorstep after a particularly rough day for Micah, she was already ready to believe.

  “Good afternoon and God bless you, ma’am, sir,” Westlund had said, smiling as he peered into their home through the screen door. “I am Doctor of Divinity John LaFontaine of the Holy Covenant Church of Jesus Christ Reformed and I am in your neighborhood today to bring you the Word of the Lord and healing for body, mind, and soul. How are you today, brother and sister?”

  “Uh, fine, but we’re not interested …,” David said, but before he could ask the man to leave, the preacher stepped up to the screen and sniffed. He made a face and stepped back as if he’d smelled something foul. “I am sorry to disturb you,” he said, shaking his head sadly and looking at them with such empathy even David felt drawn to the man. “There is a terrible sickness in this house, and I am intruding.” He paused and bowed his head, then spoke without looking up as he held out his hand toward the door. “A child is suffering … an injury to his head … no … a disease … a disease of Satan’s design.”

  Suddenly he looked up, first at Nonie and then at David. “There may still be time,” he said. “May I see the boy?”

  Wondering how the man was so certain about his diagnosis and that their child was a boy, David hesitated. After a pause, he was about to ask him to leave when Nonie touched his arm. “Please, David, let him see Micah,” she said. “What can it hurt?”

  So in spite of his misgivings, David unlatched the screen door and invited the man into their home. Without another word, Westlund marched back to Micah’s room, where their son lay on his bed, pale, thin, and exhausted. With his bald head and dark circles beneath his pain-filled eyes, he looked like a child on the verge of death. Clutching the bowl he used when nauseous, Micah stared up at the stranger with fear.

  Nonie started to reassure her son. “It’s okay, Micah, Mr.-”

  “Doctor,” the man said quickly, correcting her, which made Micah cry out unexpectedly.

  “His recent experiences with doctors have not been good ones,” David explained.

  Westlund nodded and then turned to the boy with a smile. “It’s okay, Micah, I don’t think much of those doctors either. I am not here to hurt you. I am a doctor of the soul and my cures are painless. I bring you tidings of God’s mercy and compassion.”

  Micah smiled slightly at the man’s words and the sound of his voice. He visibly relaxed.


  “Would you mind if I placed my hand on your head, son?” the preacher asked.

  Micah nodded. “That would be okay.”

  Westlund leaned over and put one of his large hands on the top of their son’s head and closed his eyes. Although they could not make out the words he began mumbling, he appeared to be praying. Then he shuddered and looked up at the Ellises’ worried faces.

  “Satan’s cancer has taken root inside his head,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Nonie replied as if the preacher was viewing some sort of supernatural MRI to confirm the doctors’ diagnosis.

  Westlund nodded and closed his eyes again. Then he frowned. “You’ve been trying to heal the boy with poisons,” he said in a slightly accusatory tone. He straightened up and removed his hand from Micah’s head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?” they asked in unison.

  Westlund started to speak but then bit his lip as he looked from Nonie to David to Nonie again. “I’m sorry, but you’ve placed your faith in the false miracles promised by purveyors of Western medicine,” he said as though it pained him to have to say it. “Only God chooses who lives and who dies; these attempts to thwart His will are a direct affront to Him.”

  “But we believe in God,” Nonie said. “We pray every day and every night for Him to help Micah.”

  Westlund looked down at Micah and shook his head. “The boy’s spirit is strong but the faith in this house is weak. You cannot ask God to heal and then hedge your bets with medicines that are brewed through Satan, who ever seeks to place himself on a level with the God who created him and us.”

  The preacher cocked his head to one side as if there was something he didn’t understand about the Ellises. “I take it you do not regularly go to church?”

  Nonie bit her lip. “We miss more often than we go,” she said, glancing at David. “We’ve just been so busy with Micah and David’s out of work-”