Way Past Dead d-3

by Steven Womack

  “ ‘And the first angel went,’ ” Reverend Woody screamed, “ ‘and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men, which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.’ ”

  Back to Maresh now: “The Pentecostal Evangelical Enochians believe that the skin lesions associated with Kaposi’s sarcoma are that ‘grievous sore which had the mark of the beast.’ AIDS, they say, is the biblically predicted precursor of Judgment Day. The Enochians also saw the 1994 bloody genocidal massacres in Rwanda, in which bodies floated down rivers so thick they became a cholera hazard, as further evidence of the seven angels and the impending apocalypse.”

  “ ‘And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood!’ ” Hogg was in a frenzy now.

  “And in a videotaped sermon last year,” Maresh continued, “which has only recently been made available to the press by a disgruntled ex-cult member, Hogg even drew an apocalyptic revelation from the career of Madonna.”

  My jaw dropped as they cut to Hogg, an open Bible in his hand, at a podium inside a church that looked to me more like a bingo hall.

  “My children, she is here! The Bible predicted her, and she has taken the name of the blessed mother of our blessed Savior! In Revelations 17, God tells us: ‘And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy!’

  “She is here, my children! And her lies and fornication foretell of us the end of the world! The Great Whore who has stolen the blessed virgin’s name is upon us now in these last days of the world!”

  He seemed to be in a trance, possessed of the spirit, or something dangerously close to it.

  “This is absolutely fucking insane,” I said out loud to a television that, once again, didn’t bother to respond. Maresh continued his report, then wrapped it up with a quick summary of the week’s events. Ted Koppel segued to a commercial, then came back and introduced his guests. I recognized the mayor and the chief of police, sitting nervously in front of two separate cameras as Koppel slipped them the tough questions in his own iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove style.

  “Chief Gleaves, you and the mayor both insist that you’re not going to call in either the National Guard or federal agents. Yet isn’t it true that if we are to believe the Enochians and their claims about weapons, they have you outgunned?”

  Harold Gleaves shifted nervously in his chair, then gave his tie a Rodney Dangerfield tug. “Well, Mr. Koppel, I don’t want to get into speculating what kinds of weapons they may or may not have down there, and I certainly don’t want to disclose what we’ve got on our side of the fence. I’d like to emphasize that the important thing for us is to keep the dialogue open. We’ve got a top-notch hostage negotiating team down there. We care very much about finding a peaceful resolution to all this. We’re willing to talk. We want to talk. I only hope that the other side will remain open to that as well.”

  “Good job, Harold,” I said.

  “Mr. Mayor,” Koppel asked, “at what point would you be willing to request the governor to call out the National Guard?”

  The mayor was a former entrepreneur who’d made a fortune in the car-parts business. Right now he looked like he wished he’d stayed in the private sector, where the only hostile takeovers he had to worry about were on paper.

  “I’ve speaken-spoken-with the governor,” he said, stumbling over his words. “I’ve kept him apprised of the situation. We feel like we’re a long way away from having to call out the National Guard or seek federal intervention.”

  “Good dodge, Mr. Mayor,” I said.

  Then Ted turned to Professor Barbara Hatfield, whom Ted had introduced as a Vanderbilt University sociologist who’d made a study of religious cults in the Deep South.

  “Professor Hatfield, how serious are they? They must know that no matter how heavily armed they are, ultimately they’ll suffer the same fate as Koresh’s group did in Waco if they push the issue too far. Do you think they’re willing to do that? Is this a suicidal group of martyrs at work here?”

  Professor Hatfield, in her midthirties, a bespectacled, seriously academic lady, took her time and chose her words carefully: “That’s what causes me the most fear, Ted. Clearly, as our experience in Waco showed, there are levels of obsession at work here that make suicidal martyrdom a distinct possibility. The five innocent people trapped inside the morgue right now are the ones for whom I fear the most.”

  My gut knotted up.

  “At the very least,” she continued, “we must take their threats of armed confrontation seriously. From Jim Jones to David Koresh, we’ve seen that these threats can be realized. The one departure here from recent events like this-and I’m not sure what the ultimate importance of this will be-is that their leader is not behind the barricades with them. If apocalypse comes to Nashville, Tennessee, we apparently won’t see the Reverend Woodrow Tyberious Hogg go up in flames with his flock.”

  “Good point, Professor Hatfield,” Ted said. “Exactly how much control do you think Reverend Hogg is exerting over his followers? He claims to be only their inspirational and spiritual leader, and he insists that the criminal acts they’ve committed in the group’s name were not ordered by him.”

  “Well …” She hesitated for a moment. “I think I have to speak with some sensitivity here because we are still involved in active crisis management. But I am very dubious of Reverend Hogg’s claims in this area. I think he has substantial control over his group. He may not be controlling their every action, but …”

  “You think if he ordered them to stand down, they’d do it,” Ted interjected.

  Professor Hatfield nodded. “Absolutely.”

  Ted turned back to Chief Gleaves. “With that in mind, Chief Gleaves, have you made attempts to speak with Reverend Hogg?”

  “We’ve certainly made attempts,” Gleaves answered. “But we haven’t had much success with opening a dialogue with him. As you said, he insists he’s just their spiritual leader, and he claims that what they’re doing is biblically sound and morally justified. We, of course, don’t agree.”

  “That’s the understatement of the year,” I said.

  “What about this business of giving the body of Reverend Hogg’s wife back to the group? Is that in the realm of possibility? Can this be done without the government seeming to have caved in on the issue?”

  Again, Chief Gleaves spoke up. “What we’re trying to do right now is reach an agreement with the group that will avoid bloodshed, and yet still allow us to fulfill our constitutional obligation to uphold the law. One avenue we’re exploring is that while state law requires us to perform an autopsy in this case, it doesn’t specify in medical terms what an autopsy actually consists of. So if we can reach an agreement whereby we perform the tests necessary to determine the cause of death, but do it in such a way that the religious strictures of the group aren’t violated, then we may be able to settle this peaceably.”

  Harold Gleaves was coming off very well. By tomorrow morning, the mayor would hate him.

  “Even then,” Ted Koppel asked, “the group would still face charges. Would they be serious charges?”

  Gleaves hesitated a moment. “My feeling is that we’re probably looking at some weapons charges, trespassing, maybe a few others. Given the circumstances, nothing all that serious.”

  “What about kidnapping?”

  “Well, that would, of course, be up to a grand jury and the District Attorney’s Office. My feeling at this point in time is the charges that are ultimately leveled will be in direct relation to the cooperation we receive fro
m the group, and to the outcome of this situation.”

  I whistled. “Goddamn brilliant, Harold,” I said. If those people down there had any brains at all, they’d understand that Harold Gleaves had just given them an easy way out. Now if they’d only take it.

  The conversation continued along those lines for another fifteen minutes or so, then Ted signed off with a teaser that tomorrow night’s 20/20 would feature Baba Wawa interviewing a woman who claimed to be yet another bimbo who’s claimed to have slept with Bill Clinton. Amazingly, he pulled it off with a straight face.

  I punched in the cellular number and she answered on the second ring.

  “Yes.”

  “We have got to get you out of there,” I said.

  She let loose a deep breath that had been locked inside her chest for too long. “So you saw it.”

  “Are you kidding? Of course I saw it.”

  “Well, I don’t know, Harry. I haven’t heard from you all day. I thought you’d forgotten about me.”

  I got the distinct feeling I’d been snapped at, and thought for a moment she was being funny. There was no characteristic tag laugh at the end, though, and I suddenly realized she was serious.

  “You know better than that.”

  “Do I?” she demanded, her voice as sharp as a hammer rap. “I don’t know, Harry. I really don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything.”

  “Marsha, what’s wrong?”

  She laughed meanly. “Oh, listen to you! What do you think’s wrong? I’ve just been locked up in a loony bin for six days and nights! Other than that, I can’t imagine what could be wrong?”

  “Marsha, listen to me. Something’s changed. What’s going on down there?”

  There was a long pause, a strained and painful silence, punctuated by what sounded like a sob. Only I’d never heard her cry before; wasn’t sure, in fact, if she even knew how.

  “Oh, God,” she whimpered. “I had to break up a fight today, Harry.”

  I was stunned into momentary silence. “You did what?” I gasped.

  “Larry and Charlie got in a fight over a stupid, freeze-dried meal. They were beating the hell out of each other.”

  Larry and Charlie were two of the morgue attendants, young guys who’d managed to make their way onto the civil-service list. Larry was white, Charlie black; both were high-school dropouts and virtually unemployable in the private sector. The low-level jobs at the morgue paid about as much as a career in fast food, only the benefits were better and you didn’t have to work as hard. The thought of Marsha breaking up a real fight between these two gave me chest pains.

  “So what happened?” I asked, horrified.

  “I’ve got closure strips on Larry,” she sobbed again, then cleared her throat. Her voice became a little steadier, but still very soft. “But I think he’s going to take a couple of stitches if we ever get out of here. Charlie’s okay. But there were nasty racial slurs-and threats. I mean, Charlie’s the only black person in here with us. I think he’s starting to get sensitive.”

  “I can understand that. Are you okay?”

  “I got shoved around a little when I jumped in a bit too close. But I’m okay. It’s just we’re all bored and dirty and tense and scared to death by all this. It’s all too much to take, Harry. Kay’s terrified. She locks herself alone in the back storeroom to sleep. There’s this look in her eye all the time. She’s starting to remind me of that girl whose brother gets killed by the ghouls at the beginning of Night of the Living Dead. She keeps talking about Jesus and God, which is really tough to handle given the circumstances surrounding this whole mess.”

  “Where’re you now?” I asked, trying to keep my own voice steady.

  “In my office. Larry and Perry are in Dr. Henry’s office, and Charlie’s back in the cooler, sleeping on a gurney. I’ve got them separated for now. I think they’re all asleep.”

  Perry Mascotti was the third, and senior, attendant. He was older than the other two and had worked at the morgue several years.

  “Last night, I caught Larry going through the file drawers in Dr. Henry’s office,” she said. “I don’t know what he was looking for, but the night before, somebody snapped the lock on the locked cabinet in the autopsy room.”

  “Looking for what? You got any drugs or anything there?”

  “No, of course not. But I don’t think any of those three would necessarily know that. Kay’s the only one who’s certified to assist in autopsies and knows what’s in that room.”

  “This is terrible,” I said before I could censor myself. Probably not the smartest comment.

  Her voice broke again. “It’s going to get worse.”

  I tried to put a little iron back in my voice, hoping maybe that would help her. “C’mon now, babe. You’re in charge there. You’re the authority. You’ve got to keep yourself together.”

  “Stop the pep talk, Harry. I know what I have to do, and I’m going to do it. I just need somebody on the outside I can moan to right now.”

  “I’m sorry. I never know what to do in situations like this.”

  She almost broke a laugh. “Well, the next time I’m a hostage, you’ll know better.”

  A long, deep sigh came out of me before I realized it. “You’re sounding more like you again.”

  “I am me,” she answered. Then the damn phone popped again.

  “I’ve got to go. I need to check in with Spellman before the phone dies, and then I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “Has he been out there the whole time?”

  “Every minute,” she said. “He’s been a real trooper.”

  “I owe him,” I said. “Big time. Do me a favor, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Lock your office door. You got anything to protect yourself with?”

  “I’ve got my thirty-eight.”

  “Sleep with it next to you, okay?”

  “I have, every night. Up until now, it was in case the wackos charged us and tried to get in. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “No matter. Just watch yourself.”

  “I will. Listen, this is a hell of a time to say this, but I love you.”

  Something caught in my throat and I swallowed hard. I’m not sure either of us had ever come out and just said it quite like that. “I love you, too. And one last question …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is Charlie really back there sleeping with the stiffs?” She giggled, sort of. “It’s the only air-conditioned room in the building.”

  “Well, tell him I said to tell Evangeline hi.”

  Chapter 30

  The clock-radio alarm at seven sounded like an explosion. I jumped out of bed, instantly awake for that split second that it took me to turn the radio off, then back dead asleep as I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt myself falling over, until a voice on the edge of my consciousness told me that if I did, the whole day would be gone before I came to again.

  I’d fallen asleep, finally, just as the sun began to shimmer greens and yellows off the tops of the trees outside my bedroom window. My eyes felt like somebody’d visited me in the middle of the night and stuffed a handful of BBs under each eyelid.

  It had been days going on weeks since I’d felt anywhere near rested. It was hard for me to believe that barely a week ago, I was nestled in a field of tall grass, being eaten alive by chiggers, videotaping some buttwipe who’s supposed to be paralyzed slam-dunking a basketball. If I hadn’t been in Louisville, Marsha and I might have missed the call telling her to come in to work Saturday night, and now she might be out here with me wondering when the morgue siege was going to be over.

  I headed toward the shower, remembering my encounter with the bricklayer. “Shoulda hit him with that stun gun again …”

  I wasn’t used to the world at this time of the morning, especially after two hours’ sleep the night before. At least I think it was two; hell, it could have been five minutes for all I knew. A warm front had moved in as I slept, and the cool spring weather h
ad been swapped overnight for humidity and temperature in the high eighties. By the time I got to the office, it was past eight. I don’t know why I was so worried about all this. Phil said he’d get the check here. It was in his own best interest to do so, and I’ve always counted on people acting in their own best interest. Lately, though, I’d begun to wonder. Maybe I was just feeling like the smallest guy in the feeding chain.

  Once inside the office, I scanned the floor for envelopes that might have been slipped under the door. Nothing. No blinking light on the answering machine either. No calls, no check.

  I slammed the door behind me, pulled off my jacket, then slid into my chair. Maybe I’d just slip off and take a little catnap for a while, try to make up for lost time. I closed my eyes, let myself drift, tried to let go of everything.

  Only problem was, everything wouldn’t let go of me. I kept thinking of Marsha and what might happen this weekend. Slim kept popping up in my mind as well. I imagined him sitting in jail, helpless, frustrated, with very few options left open to him.

  Then there was Mac Ford’s Rolls-Royce. The more I sat there, the more that kept coming back. Why? Why would a guy like that be in the position of having a car repossessed? I knew from my experience working for Lonnie as a part-time skip-tracer and repo man that there are certain symptoms that crop up in a deteriorating financial life, and these symptoms are as predictable as the stages of a terminal disease.

  It starts out with there never quite being enough cash to cover the expenses, so you start loading up the credit cards. First the gas, then the restaurant and bar bills. But then at the end of the month, you can’t pay off the credit cards, so you start paying the minimum balance due, but you keep charging those suckers up, anyway. Then you’re getting cash advances to cover kited checks, or maybe you’re borrowing off one credit card to pay another. Meanwhile the cash situation gets tighter and tighter; the lifestyle’s out of control, like a cancer eating away at you. If you don’t stop soon, it’ll swamp you. But you can’t, so you miss a car payment or a loan payment. The house payment’s late and you drop your insurance. People start calling you around dinnertime, polite inquiries about late bills. You explain and mollify, placate and appease, for as long as you can. Then you dodge. You screen your calls, or you stop answering altogether.