by Alex Grecian
The rain had stopped while he was in the house, but sheets of water still poured off the porch overhang. Travis walked through it, stepping carefully on the slick steps. A thick fog had rolled in with the breeze, and he felt the icy cold all down his spine.
He put up his collar and ran to the neighboring porch. There were no cameras he could see under the eaves, and he crossed the porch, peering through the windows next to the front door. A man sat on a sagging couch watching TV, the blue light casting demonic shadows across his broad face. He had a single bushy eyebrow that ran the width of his face and wore the same sort of brown shirt that Deacon Heinrich had been wearing. Travis guessed the man must weigh three hundred pounds, and a fair amount of it looked like muscle. There was no sign of anyone else in the house, but Travis didn’t like his odds against the giant.
He jumped down and ran toward the next house, slipping on the wet grass, but keeping his feet under him. He didn’t have a plan yet, and his mind was churning through the possibilities. He knew he could get back into the compound through the main gate, but he assumed that would be guarded now. He needed to find a way back onto the church grounds without being discovered, and he hoped one of the other houses would be empty. He was certain Rudy Goodman had lied to him, but his lies might be mixed with kernels of truth. Purity First might indeed be holding Ransom Roan captive, and it was possible Rachel Bloom was on a plane bound for New York. But Travis had no intention of taking the Nazi’s words at face value.
A pair of headlights switched on halfway down the street, the beams diffuse and otherworldly. The driver’s-side door opened and a figure stepped out onto the blacktop, his face concealed by the wide brim of his hat.
“If you go back in alone, they’ll kill you,” the man said. “Come on. It’s cold out here, dammit.” Illustrating his point, he got back in the car and slammed the door.
After a moment’s hesitation, Travis walked out to the street and got in the car. The driver turned to him and nodded like he was picking up an old conversation.
“We got a lot to talk about, Doc,” Sheriff Goodman said.
Part Three
* * *
RANSOM
October 2018
“I eat right, sleep well, and keep my conscience clear.” That was Rudy’s stock answer when people asked him how he had remained so well preserved. Of course, he also believed the lightning was responsible for his vitality. It healed others, but it had always lived in him, even if it was aging as he aged.
For a ninety-four-year-old man, he was remarkably fit and flexible, and his face was unlined so that in a certain light he looked almost childlike.
He rarely left his house behind the church. He didn’t give sermons anymore or walk the few yards across the compound to heal the sick and injured. Every once in a great while Heinrich would bring someone to his kitchen door who was afflicted with arthritis or shingles or cataracts, usually someone who had donated a lot of money to Purity First and in return had demanded to see Reverend Rudy. In those rare instances, he would lay his hands on them, but the energy that passed between them was always weak now, a mere shiver of lightning, an echo of thunder.
Sometimes, in the early morning, Rudy would get one of the church boys to take him out for a spin in the church bus. The original Volkswagen had been replaced by a newer van around the turn of the century, painted in the same bright colors and polka-dot pattern as the first bus. But he had made some improvements to the inside.
Everyone thought it quaint that Reverend Rudy liked to ride around in his folk-band-church-social-clown van as if it were still 1976. People smiled as he passed them, and if they were members of his church they waved at him. Sometimes other people threw things at the van or yelled curse words at him. Those people were outsiders, and they mattered to him not at all.
For a long time he had been careful, driving the Skylark, never having anything on him that could help the police identify him or trace him back to the church. But over time he realized that the church bus gave him protective coloration. Purity First wasn’t well liked, he knew that, but Midwesterners were raised to treat a church and its trappings with deference, and that courtesy extended to the van. He had been pulled over only once while driving it, and only because a taillight had burned out. The trooper had never looked inside, never asked him to open up the back. The Christmas-colored bus had cloaked him in respectability and made him feel safe, free to go about his business in peace.
In the old days he would keep an eye out as he drove and pull to the curb when there were no adults nearby and the group of children was small. He preferred one or two kids at a time, and girls were better than boys; girls with olive skin and dark hair were best of all. His little princesses. He had kept candy in a box behind the front seat and had given it to the children indiscriminately. Sometimes he would invite a child to ride with him around the block or through a park. He would watch carefully to see if anyone had observed him from a window or a shadowed doorway. And if he felt safe, he would take the child back to the church with him.
Everyone kept secrets within them, but children had the best secrets of all.
He had taken women, too, given them rides to his special basement room. And there had been men as well, a handful over the years. Gary Gilbert sprang to mind. The secrets men kept were bitter and hard, and men didn’t make the right noises when fear overtook them, when they lost all hope for mercy or rescue. No, children were always preferable.
But lately he had slowed down. Now he only ventured out once or twice a year, and there was no real urgency about his trips. In fact, he was likely to give away all his candy and come back home with an empty van, and that was all right with him. His headaches weren’t as bad as they used to be, but he didn’t have much energy these days.
The business with the old woman bothered him. He had grown a beard when he got to America, lost his hair after the first lightning strike, started wearing glasses in the seventies when his eyesight had begun to grow weak. When he looked in the mirror, he saw no trace of the man he had been, the failed doctor, the reluctant administrator. His German accent was faint beneath the acquired drawl of his western Kansas dialect. But the woman had recognized him nonetheless, and she had told her friend, the teacher. And the teacher had told her son. So many threads that still had to be cut or the cloth would come unraveled.
And that singular coincidence had brought back memories that he had thought dead and buried. He was experiencing lost time, and he found himself coming awake in strange places, in the bathtub or standing in the middle of the basketball court or down in his secret basement room, with the taste of ashes in his mouth. For the first time, the church and the family he had built from nothing began to feel like a prison.
He wondered how many years he had left.
So when the vibrant blues and greens of summer faded to brown and yellow, Rudy decided to take a trip, maybe find a new distraction to bring back home with him, something to ease his cabin fever. Donnie Mueller had proven himself trustworthy, and although Rudy hated the fact that he could no longer drive himself, he enjoyed the man’s company. He sent for Donnie and waited impatiently for him to open the gate and nose the van down the alley and out onto the street. Rudy got in and they meandered around the neighborhood, waved at some of the passersby there, taking their time, and then drove to the turnoff for US-283 and headed south.
Traffic was light and they left the highway in WaKeeney earlier than Rudy had expected. Donnie drove around the little town, stopping at the parks and schools, but never lingering. There was a Pizza Hut where the high school kids sometimes hung out, and Donnie pulled the van into the parking lot late in the morning. The place had just opened up for lunch, and there was only one other car parked with its nose facing the main door. But there was also a bicycle in the rack around the side of the building. A single bicycle, pink, with tassels hanging from the handlebars.
Donnie parked at the opposite end of the lot from the car, a rental with Texas pla
tes. Rudy got out and went inside, leaving Donnie to mind the van. They had been there a few times before. Every few months Rudy sat at the back of the big dining room and had pasta from the buffet and watched the high school kids horse around with one another. His scars itched, and he tried not to scratch them as he ate. And the children were so caught up in their private dramas that they didn’t notice him.
He recognized one or two of the employees who were bustling about, getting the buffet ready for the lunch rush. There was a young Hispanic girl waiting at the counter. She was holding a crumpled dollar bill, and Rudy guessed she might be waiting to get change for the video games that were located in a small alcove beside the front door. The pink bicycle outside would belong to her.
The door opened behind him, and an older man walked in with a New Yorker under his arm. He looked around the room, then went to a corner table, sat, and opened his magazine. He was dressed impeccably in a sharkskin suit that set off the silver highlights in his long gray hair. Rudy felt mildly self-conscious in his red track suit, but after a moment’s reflection decided he looked all right. At least he wasn’t drawing attention to himself as an outsider.
Rudy stepped up to the counter and stood behind the girl, watching the cooks pull pizzas out of the ovens and slice them with a big rocking blade that reminded Rudy of a scythe. The girl turned around to look at him, then turned away again. She looked like she might be anywhere between twelve and fifteen.
Rudy could remember a time when there were no Hispanics in the area, no blacks, no Jews. In the early eighties, a black family had moved into Paradise Flats. But they hadn’t stayed long, and they hadn’t changed anything about the community. Rudy had known, though, that they were merely scouts and there would be more. Like ants who sent out one or two or three at a time to establish scent trails. Once you saw the first ant, it was too late. The swarm was coming. Now there were six black families living in the area around Paradise Flats, and Rudy had stopped counting the spics.
“They’re pretty busy,” he said to the girl’s back. “Might be a while.”
The girl shrugged.
“You need change for the games?”
She shrugged again. The talkative sort.
“I’ve got change,” he said.
At last she turned her head and squinted at him. She shook her head. “I don’t mind waiting.”
“Here.” Rudy reached into his pocket and pulled out a small rubber coin purse. He squeezed it open and poked around inside until he found six quarters. He fished them out and showed them to the girl in the palm of his hand.
“I only have a dollar,” the girl said.
“That’s okay. Take them all.”
“I don’t think—”
“Honestly,” Rudy said, “they’re heavy. My pants are gonna fall down with those in there.”
She wrinkled her nose at him, but he smiled to show her it was a joke. “Go ahead,” he said.
At last she reached out and scooped the quarters out of his palm, replaced them with the dollar bill. It was moist with her sweat. He disguised his revulsion with another friendly smile. Just a nice old man waiting for some pizza. He watched her scamper away toward the machines and then stepped up to the counter and waited to be helped. He eventually paid for the buffet, and found a table as far as he could from the man in the sharkskin suit. The stranger was watching him over the top of his magazine, like someone out of an old spy movie, and Rudy wished he would just go away.
Rudy ate two pieces of sausage pizza, wiped his hands with a paper napkin, and stood up. He left the girl’s sweaty dollar bill as a tip and moved toward the front door, managing to get there just as the girl finished playing Ms. Pac-Man. She stepped back from the machine and almost bumped into him.
He chuckled. “Done with the games?”
“Last quarter.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
She shrugged yet again. He wanted to pry her mouth open and pull her tongue out. If she wasn’t going to use it, why have it at all?
But instead he opened his eyes wide and snapped his fingers. “You know what? I think I might have more quarters in my bus.” He was careful not to call it a van. Kids these days were taught to be suspicious of strangers.
“Bus?” Sure enough, she craned her neck to see out the big windows at the front of the Pizza Hut. The green-and-red van was visible from a distance no matter where it was parked, and he could see the subtle change in her expression. How could something that looked like a holiday on wheels be threatening? She looked back up at him. “I don’t know, mister.”
He had her that easily. The promise of some nonexistent quarters. It was nearly always that easy, though, and his triumph didn’t show on his face. He was sure it didn’t.
“Come with me.”
He didn’t look back, just swung the door open and walked out onto the chilly blacktop. He could hear her behind him. He motioned to Donnie and the side door slid wide, revealing its dark interior. Rudy leaned in and grabbed a tool that was sitting ready beside the center console.
“You know,” he said, turning to look at her, “I’m not sure exactly where they …”
The girl was running away across the parking lot, and in her place was the stranger in the sharkskin suit, the New Yorker rolled up under his arm, an umbrella held loose in his left hand. He was much taller than Rudy was, and broader across the shoulders. The stranger reached into his jacket with his free right hand, and Rudy could see that there was a shoulder holster there under his left arm.
“Am I right in thinking you’re Rudolph Bormann?”
Rudy hadn’t heard that name in more than sixty years and it didn’t immediately register, but an alarm went off somewhere in the recesses of his lizard brain. He jabbed out with his Taser, not thinking, not planning, not at all careful, the way he was usually so careful. But the Taser was there in his hand, ready for the little girl who had now disappeared completely, having enjoyed the benefit of Rudy’s quarters and not having paid him back in any way; it was there and he used it. An instinct.
The stranger stumbled back, his eyes wide, and dropped his umbrella with a clatter. Rudy hit him again. The third time the man went down in a quivering mass on the blacktop, the New Yorker flapping its reluctant way across the field behind the van.
Rudy looked back and forth between the highway and the big front window of the Pizza Hut, but no one came running, there was no outcry. The driver’s-side door creaked open, and Donnie came running around the front.
“Oh, shit,” he said softly, as if to himself.
“Help me,” Rudy said.
Donnie started to open the passenger-side door.
“No,” Rudy said. “Help me put him in the van.”
“Oh, shit,” Donnie said again.
Donnie got the man under his arms and Rudy stooped and lifted his legs. Even with Donnie’s help, it wasn’t easy. Rudy’s knees hurt, and the stranger weighed a good deal more than the little girl would have. They had to rest the man on the lip of the doorway until Rudy could catch his breath. Then he bent and pushed up, folding the stranger’s legs up against his chest while Donnie scrambled backward and rolled him onto his side so Rudy could close the door.
When it was done, Rudy leaned against the van and waited, panting and watching.
A hawk flew overhead and screeched, banked toward something unseeable in the field, and disappeared in the grass. Rudy watched it and felt his pulse at his wrist, counted, calmed himself.
“We should go,” Donnie said. Rudy had already forgotten the boy was there. Sometimes he wondered if his mind was beginning to go.
“I want to know who he is,” Rudy said.
He climbed back in the van, crawled over to the stranger, and felt his pulse. It was slower than Rudy’s, but steady. The man wasn’t going to wake up soon. Still, Rudy used one of the chains bolted to the floor of the van and secured the man’s body. Then he went through the man’s suit pockets and found a car key.
Donnie
started the van and sat behind the wheel, bouncing in place, anxious to get going. Rudy ignored him. He stood in the parking lot and pointed the big plastic end of the key at the rental car with Texas plates. It beeped and unlocked for him. Inside, the car was clean and smelled new. Nothing behind the visor or in the glove box. But there was a wallet in the console, and Rudy took it with him back to the van, sat in the passenger seat, and removed the contents, spreading them out on his lap, while Donnie started the van and drove back to the highway and away from WaKeeney.
According to the man’s driver’s license, his name was Ransom Roan. A small stack of five business cards identified Ransom as “chief investigator” for something called the Noah Roan Foundation. Rudy had never heard of it. A family business? Had Ransom Roan followed Rudy from the church or was he at the Pizza Hut by coincidence?
Rudy had a lot of questions for his new friend Ransom. He shoved the contents of the wallet back inside and put it away in the glove box, then reached back and used the Taser again on Ransom’s limp body. Then once more for good measure. He didn’t want Ransom to wake up before Rudy was ready for him.
He felt as if he had woken up from a long nap, and there was a familiar tingle in his fingertips. He whistled tunelessly as Donnie drove, and anyone who saw him would have said he looked much younger than his ninety-four years.
Chapter Nine
1
Skottie had become increasingly frustrated with Lieutenant Johnson. He insisted on following protocol and wouldn’t sign off on her involvement in the tractor fire investigation. With the threat of a lawsuit hanging over the department, he said he needed to be able to show that everything had been handled properly and aboveboard. Skottie had not been the first to arrive at the scene of the fire, she had not been the officer in charge, and she had left before the coroner showed up, so the lieutenant had elected to keep her on the sidelines.
