The Pawn pbf-1

by Steven James

  No reply. He was aiming the guns toward me, coming fast- Take him down, Pat, or you’re dead.

  Before I could pull the trigger I heard two rapid gunshots from my left, and the figure jerked backward into the air and crashed to the ground.

  Suddenly the lights were on and Tucker was rushing through the door, waving his gun. “I got him,” he cried. “I got Grolin.” Red light still pulsing.

  Pulsing.

  We stared at the other side of the room. Two bodies lay on the floor.

  One was Vanessa Mueller, shot in the neck.

  The other was Joseph Grolin, bleeding from the chest.

  A strip of black gaffer’s tape was secured over Grolin’s mouth. Both of his hands were tightly taped, thoroughly taped, around the grips of handguns.

  Toy handguns.

  57

  “No, oh please, no…” gasped Tucker. “What have I done?”

  Lien-hua ran to help Vanessa. I rushed over to Grolin. He was still alive.

  “Put your gun away,” I yelled to Tucker. “Now.”

  Grolin couldn’t get the guns off his hands. He couldn’t drop them. And he couldn’t rip the tape off his mouth to tell us. I removed the tape from his face, and he spit out a bloody white pawn.

  “Who did this to you, Joseph?” I asked. “Who?”

  He swallowed hard, searching for breath. “I didn’t hurt her,” he managed to say. Tears burned in his eyes. He’d been crying for a while, probably knew the cops were coming and had been trying to get free.

  “Who?” I said. “Who did this?”

  The crimson light beat around us. Brum, brum. Brum, brum… He spit up a mouthful of blood.

  “Get an ambulance, now!” I shouted at Tucker, who was standing in shock beside me. I leaned closer to Grolin. He was trying to say something.

  But it was too late. He gasped one last time and slumped to the ground.

  No!

  I started chest compressions, but with two gunshot wounds to the chest like that, it wasn’t going to do much good. Brum, brum. Brum, brum… “We need that ambulance!”

  Lien-hua radioed for help. Tucker was still in shock. “What have I done?” he was mumbling. “What have I done?”

  “Why did you have to rush in here, Tucker?” I yelled. “Why couldn’t you wait?”

  Sirens. The police were on their way.

  Brum, brum. Brum, brum…

  I tried to beat the life back into Grolin’s shredded heart. It was no use. Joseph Grolin was dead.

  And he wasn’t the Illusionist.

  Ten minutes later the ambulance was pulling away to take Vanessa Mueller to Mission Memorial Hospital. She might very well die at her place of work. The mood at the scene was grim.

  “He rushed me,” said Lien-hua. She was stunned. We all were. “I kicked at his hand when it looked like he had a weapon. He wouldn’t drop it.”

  “Each of us is going to have to file a full report on this,” I said. “Figure out exactly what happened here.”

  “You saw him, right?” Tucker said to us. “He was waving the guns at me.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. In the end, Brent probably wouldn’t get into disciplinary trouble. After all, the guy was waving what appeared to be two guns at us and wouldn’t verbally respond or drop his weapons.

  Of course, he couldn’t do either.

  He was just another one of the Illusionist’s pawns.

  I was beginning to think we all were.

  “The killer lured us here through Vanessa,” I said. “No one shot at her, though, right?”

  We all shook our heads.

  “All right,” I said. “Then he was here, somewhere. We’ll have the CSIU guys scour the place and have ballistics check the bullet in her neck to see if it matches the bullet that was taken out of the neck of that guy at the parking garage.”

  Then I turned to Tucker. “I hate this part, but I have to do it. As the senior agent here, I need you to hand me your weapon. It was used in a lethal shooting, and until a complete investigation can be-”

  “I know.” He slapped his gun into my hand. “I know.” His face clouded over, and I couldn’t tell if it was shock or guilt that was sweeping over him. Maybe it was both. He turned and slouched away. I let him go. I felt bad for him, sick to my stomach about the whole thing. But I didn’t really know what else to say.

  For the next two hours I answered questions and filled out paperwork for the responding officers until I was bleary-eyed. I was the last one from our team to leave the scene. After catching a ride to my hotel with one of the officers I collapsed on the bed. Tried to sleep.

  Ended up doing pull-ups instead.

  But my shoulder hurt so bad I had to do them with only one arm.

  And with each pull-up I vowed I would catch the Illusionist.

  My anger was laced with fresh fire, and nothing short of stopping him was going to put it out.

  58

  Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid stood outside the gathering room for a moment and listened.

  Beyond the door he could hear a man speaking in a measured, calming, rambling way. He knew the voice. It was Father’s voice, the Reverend Jim Jones’s voice.

  And he knew the tape. It was the one in which Father convinced his followers, his family, to line up and die. Over the years Aaron had taught his own family the words. They recited them as blessings over their children, believed in them as if they were holy prayers.

  Some people called it the Death Tape.

  Kincaid just remembered it as the Final Message.

  He opened the door and found his family waiting cross-legged on the lush carpet. A few of the women softly sang an old-time hymn, swaying, their eyes closed.

  As he stepped into the room, all the singing stopped. One of the men turned off the recording, and the family members bowed their heads out of respect, lowering their foreheads to the floor, holding their arms out to the side, palms up, like broken wings. He hadn’t taught them this gesture; hadn’t asked them to do it, but over the years it had just become the natural response. They were only trying to honor him, and he wouldn’t deny them that. There was no reason to deny them that.

  He loved this group more than he’d ever loved anything in his life-at least it seemed like love to him. It was difficult to tell. They’d taught him so much about himself, so much about his possibilities. But whether it was love or not, whatever he felt toward them, it was a noble feeling. He was sure of that.

  “Thirty years ago a great tragedy unfolded,” he began, and as he spoke they sat up again one at a time. “One of the greatest tragedies of that generation. It didn’t need to happen. There was no reason for it to happen. Parents died that day, parents who loved their children. Brothers and sisters died that day. Men and women just like us who had done no wrong, who had broken no law, who had hurt no one, died on that day. Good people. People like you and I died on that day. On that terrible day.”

  His followers nodded in agreement as he spoke. They knew the story well.

  “Life was not an option to them if they could not live free. They would rather cross over to the other side than live enslaved by the society that chained them to repression, that hated them for their beliefs.” Kincaid drifted among them now, grazing his fingers along their cheeks in an act of silent blessing.

  “Their only crime was dreaming of and fighting for and believing in a better world.” He paused. It wasn’t for dramatic effect, although it served that purpose. He paused because the memories were catching up with him, chasing him just like the Peoples Temple gunmen had done in the twilight. He remembered the babies and the river and the syringes. “But what breaks my heart the most is not that they died but that the legacy of their lives has been stained. All of us must die, but our memories need not be trampled. My family, my friends, were called crazy cultists by the world, left for days to rot in the sun while the U.S. government positioned itself to cover up its role in their destruction.”

  His voice thickened. His face flu
shed with anger. “The tragedy that cost them their lives was the fault of the government that hunted them. The culture that lines its pockets with the dreams of the poor.”

  His followers, his family, voiced their agreement.

  Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid stopped walking and stood like a statue, like a god, among his followers, among the true believers. A tremor of pure rage caught hold of him, but he embraced the anger, held it close, let it inform him, become his guide.

  He took Marcie’s chin in his hand and gently tilted her head up to meet his gaze. She blushed to be singled out in this way by the Master. Some of the women had started to weep softly while the men steeled their eyes and nodded iron jaws. Marcie had borne him a daughter. He knew she would understand about the children. She’d been with him since the beginning. Even worked in PTPharmaceuticals’s research and development department before joining the family. The delicate tears in her eyes told him that he was right. She did understand. She stared past him to the door of the library.

  “And so, to protect our children from the hands of those who would take them from us, from those who would teach them only deceit and evil and hatred, we have done what we must, out of love. Out of hope for the future. We have sent them to the other side ahead of us to protect them from the pain that I have carried all these years”-he looked down into Marcie’s eyes-“the pain of knowing that the memory of those you love has been spat upon by the world.”

  He watched her face.

  “Mercy and love require protecting children from a life filled with such torment.”

  Marcie began to cry soft, constant tears. Still he didn’t let her look away.

  “Do we want our children to suffer? To grow up to hear their parents scorned and ridiculed for their beliefs? No. We do not. We will not let it happen, because we love our children too much.”

  More tears came. A few of the people ventured glances toward the door to the library.

  “We have done to our children as our predecessors did to theirs. But only because we love them as they loved theirs, to protect our children as they protected theirs.”

  “Yes,” shouted one of the men. “Yes, Father!”

  And then Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid let go of Marcie’s jaw and walked to the library door. He grabbed the handle and opened the door so that he could see the bodies of the children for himself.

  59

  They were lying in rows. Peaceful and still at last, free from the trials and treacheries of life. Very orderly. Lined up by age, with the youngest first, the babies leading the others.

  David had been gentle with them. He could have snapped them in half, but he chose to let them drink the medication instead. His was a pure love full of mercy and compassion. Yes, Kincaid told himself, he had chosen wisely when he’d appointed David to be his aide. He had chosen well.

  Kincaid turned to face the group. “They have crossed over before us. They will meet us on the other side. We use the term ‘death’ to make the transition sound final, but really it is an awakening. And their awakening marks the beginning of a greater awakening throughout the world.”

  His family shouted their agreement. All of them did, except for Marcie, who stared past Kincaid toward the library with vacant, cloudy eyes.

  “The people of Jonestown died because they would rather choose their own destiny than have their destiny ripped from them by the very government that hunted them like animals, that planned to destroy them like dogs!”

  The murmur of agreement rippling through the room grew louder, awakening at last into frenzied cheers. Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid, the focused and passionate man, the loving man, the beneficent man, let himself form a fist with his hand. Some acts were so terrible that it was a greater crime to hold back emotion from having its rightful place. “Birth is the death of the old. Death is the birth of the new. We have planned for this. We have prepared for this journey. The time has come to set destiny right at last!”

  Kincaid lifted his hands to the sky. The people stood as one. The anticipation in the room rose to a fever pitch.

  “He is our Father!” shouted Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid.

  “He is our Father!” the men and women repeated in unison.

  “His vision, our vision! His future, our future!”

  “His vision, our vision!” they chanted. “His future, our future!”

  “It’s a cruel world!” In his mind, Kincaid was no longer at the ranch with his family, he was beside the whirlpool with Jessica.

  “It’s a cruel world!” he heard his family say, and he remembered the jungle and the men with the guns and Jessica’s trembling hands and the shore of a hungry river. His first family. The pavilion. Those who laid down and never rose again.

  “But our love will unite us forever!” he cried.

  “Our love will unite us forever!” Blood curling through the water. Swirling toward the future. Love that cannot die. Distant dreams and dying babies. A journey through the fabric of the night.

  Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid handed the needles containing the CCHF-spliced Francisella tularensis to his family. This time the world would pay. This time the revolution would find its inevitable completion. And this time so many more would be part of the revolution.

  60

  I arrived at Vanessa’s room at Mission Memorial Hospital a few minutes before 8:00 a.m. to check on her condition. I asked the doctor who was leaving the room when I stepped inside if he thought she was going to be all right.

  “Too early to tell.” He didn’t even look up from his clipboard to see who I was. And then he was gone, and I was alone with her.

  I positioned myself in one of the chairs beside a countertop covered with pills and bottles and a Gideon Bible.

  I’d called Margaret on my way to the hospital, and the conversation had gone better than I expected. She only swore at me twice. “I’m holding you personally responsible for this debacle last night.” Her voice was as taut as a cable.

  “I figured you would.”

  “You were the senior agent on-site.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Full report. Do you understand? Then we’ll see what happens from there.”

  “Fine.”

  Click.

  As far as I could tell, the killer had called Vanessa and convinced her to go to the golf course. Maybe he threatened to kill her boyfriend if she didn’t, who knows.

  The preliminary blood tests on Grolin’s body indicated that he’d been heavily sedated and then drugged. It looked like the killer had abducted him and then released him at the pro shop in a drug-induced delirium, with his hands taped to those toy weapons.

  It seemed like I was chasing a phantom.

  I hoped Vanessa might know his name.

  She lay still, the monitor beeping soft and regular. Soft and regular. Purring out her heartbeat.

  I looked around her hospital room.

  The scene looked all too familiar.

  A hospital bed. A dying woman. Stiff, ugly chairs in the corners of the room. The only thing missing was a fervent young pastor named Donovan Richman.

  Of course, this time the woman wasn’t my wife of just five months; instead she was the only person who might be able to lead us to a maniacal killer. That was all.

  For a few minutes I found myself listening to Vanessa’s soft, methodical breathing and smelling the stark antiseptic smell only hospitals seem to have. And with each passing moment another wave of grief went roaring through my chest. I was sitting there lost in thought when I heard Lien-hua’s voice. “Dr. Bowers?”

  I turned. “Yeah?”

  She stepped softly into the room. “You OK?”

  I looked down. I was clutching the Gideon Bible; I hadn’t even realized I’d picked it up. “Just thinking. Remembering.”

  “Christie?” she said softly.

  I set the Bible down. “A pastor used to come and visit her, toward the end.” I wanted to tell Lien-hua everything and I didn’t want to tell her anything at all.

  “Did i
t help?”

  I could feel myself getting tense. Thinking back to my discussions with Reverend Donovan Richman made me frustrated all over again. Christie. The doctors. The questions…

  “Patrick?”

  I blinked. “Yeah?” I’d done it again, drifted away.

  Vanessa lay motionless beside us. Brum, brum. Brum, brum… Lien-hua took a seat in the chair opposite me. “You were telling me about the pastor.” She seemed to have slipped into counseling mode. Maybe she was analyzing me, profiling me. But at that moment I didn’t really care.

  I sighed. “I don’t think he really realized how desperate Christie’s condition was because more often than not he ended up arguing with me. ‘Design is evidence of a designer,’ he told me one day, and then recited some of the typical Intelligent Design arguments-irreducible complexity, things like that.”

  “And?”

  “That was the day the doctors told me they’d given Christie a dose of the wrong medication, and her condition was spiraling downward. So when Reverend Richman said that, I laid into him. ‘OK. Wings and eyeballs, I’ll give you that,’ I said. I was trying to find a way to win at something, it seemed like I was losing everything. ‘But if design is evidence of a designer, Reverend, then let me ask you a question.’ ‘What’s that?’ he said, and I said, ‘What’s chaos evidence of?’”

  “And what did he say to that?”

  I looked from Lien-hua to Vanessa. “At first he didn’t say anything. I’d stumped him, so finally he says, ‘I don’t know, Dr. Bowers. What is chaos evidence of?’ But then, before I could reply, Benjamin answered.”

  “Wait a minute. Who’s Benjamin?”

  “One of the deacons at their church. He would come in with the pastor. He usually didn’t say much, just listened. Anyway, that day he answered my question.”