Under Cover of Darkness

by James Grippando

  “What?”

  “You are part Indian, aren’t you? I can see it.”

  Not everyone could, not even some Native Americans. But if he was on to it, there was no sense denying it. “Part, yes.”

  “Which part? Body or spirit?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that.”

  “What tribe are your ancestors from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You were adopted, weren’t you?”

  She suddenly regretted the I don’t know. She should have just picked Cherokee or some other tribe that didn’t have good recordkeeping, one that Blechman could never have verified. Not knowing your tribe was a red flag for adoption. “Yes, I was adopted.”

  He seemed to smile faintly, confident he was getting somewhere. “If I were to guess, I would say you’re Yakama.”

  “Why?”

  “The word Yakama means runaway. Are you a runaway?”

  “No.”

  “You’re running from something, Kira. Tell me what it is.”

  “I really don’t know what you mean.”

  “Are you running from something you’ve hidden in your past? Or are you running from the fact that you don’t know your past?”

  “The past is just the past.”

  “No, Kira. Until you’ve transcended the human level, you are defined by the past. It’s who you are.”

  He looked deeply into her eyes. “Who are you, Kira?”

  “What—what do you mean?”

  “You’re not who you say you are. Tell me who you are. Who you really are.”

  Her fear soared to another level. Either he knew she was a phony, or he was on verge of figuring it out. She broke from his grip and sprang from her chair, ready to run for her life.

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  Andie wheeled, ready to defend herself.

  “It’s okay,” said Blechman.

  Part of her said run, but she fought the impulse. Her cover wasn’t completely blown yet. At least she didn’t think so.

  His voice and demeanor were unthreatening. “Kira, many of my most devoted followers lied to me at first about their pasts. Some were simply unable to talk freely about past abusive relationships. Others were afraid I would reject them if they revealed their previous life of crime, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, or whatever.”

  She felt a wave of relief. He didn’t even suspect she was FBI. Just another loner with a checkered past. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  “I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. But to come on this journey, you have to break with the past. To break with the past, you have to confront your demons.”

  “That’s what I want to do.”

  “Good. And don’t be afraid. You won’t go through this alone. Felicia will help you. I will help you. And as you progress from one level to the next, you will find others to help you overcome the human traits that torment you.”

  “I’m not really tormented by anything.”

  “Yes, you are. That’s why you’re here. Only when you rid yourself of those past vibrations can you vibrate at the next level. Do you want to reach the next level?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Then make that your sole objective for all your remaining days on this planet. Not to become a better human, as your parents and teachers instructed you. But to become more than human. As long as you are human, it makes no difference whether you are a prostitute or a scientist, a minister or a murderer.”

  She cringed inside at the mention of a murderer. “I understand.”

  He rose and stepped toward her. Andie took a half step back, but she was suddenly in his grasp. She stiffened with fear, but it was just a warm embrace. He held her for nearly a full minute, then whispered softly, “Your name is now Willow, and you belong to us.”

  Fifty-six

  Gus had his investigator tail him to the meeting with Meredith Borge, fully armed, just in case. Though it would be illegal to record their conversation without Meredith’s consent, Dex wired him up anyway. No telling what direction this might take. He wanted it all on tape.

  The coffee shop was nearly empty, just two men at opposite ends of the counter and a family of five sucking down the spaghetti special at a corner table. Meredith was alone in a booth by the revolving pie display. Gus arrived precisely at eight o’clock, as instructed.

  “Got your call,” he said.

  She looked up from her coffee and gave a sideways glance toward the door, as if checking to make sure he hadn’t been followed. “Have a seat.”

  The waitress poured him a cup and freshened Meredith’s. After she’d gone, Gus asked, “Why the change of heart?”

  “Why were you so stupid as to come to my front door in broad daylight?”

  Gus wasn’t sure how to respond, but after the message on his windshield this afternoon, it was a fairly astute question. “Guess I wasn’t thinking.”

  “That’s a dangerous way to live.”

  “I’m no stranger to danger. At least not lately.”

  “I know all about your situation.”

  He wondered if that included the alleged spouse abuse. “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers or see on television.”

  “I don’t. But my daughter was a very reliable source.”

  Gus stopped in mid-sip. “Shirley told me she didn’t even know if you were alive.”

  “We didn’t talk for quite some time, that’s true.”

  “You mean after she conspired to kill you?”

  His knowing surprised her. “That put a crimp in the relationship, yeah.”

  “So when did you get over it?”

  “When she called and told me you were going to pay her a quarter million dollars.”

  “If she could help me find my wife.”

  “Which is precisely the reason she called me.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  She smiled wryly. “No way Shirley was going to find her without my help.”

  “Do you know where my wife is?”

  “No.”

  “Stop playing games with me.”

  “It’s not a game. It’s a theory. Shirley’s theory, to be exact. But she couldn’t prove it without me. I know what you need to know.”

  Gus was tiring of her coyness. “Are you talking about the cult?”

  “My, you have done your homework.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “You mean the one in the Yakima Valley, right? The one on ten acres of land with the old white farmhouse, big barn, apple and apricot orchards? Chicken coop out back?”

  “Either you’re totally making this up or you’ve been there.”

  “I lived there.”

  “When?”

  “Long before your wife started shoplifting and donating clothes to the Second Chance.”

  “Are you still…involved?”

  “No. It’s been years. Used to be a very positive environment. I got out when Blechman took over.”

  “Blechman?”

  “Younger guy. Very ambitious. Likes to think he pioneered the cult’s thinking, but he’s just another egomaniac with a pulpit.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He wrote this manuscript he thought was going to sell fifty million copies and spend two years on the New York Times bestseller list. Over a thousand pages. I’m sure it’s been rejected by every publisher on the planet. Not that there isn’t a market for this secular evangelism stuff. You’ve seen all these books lately that tap into the wave of spiritualism and enlightenment without conventional religion. Anyway, Blechman thought he could parlay the book into a weekly magazine, CD-ROMs, audiotapes, his own worldwide television talk show. So far the only place the philosophy seems to have caught on is on his farm.”

  “What’s the philosophy?

  “Can’t say. Never read the book.”

  “I would think you would have gained some insights just from being around the farm.”

  “You would think,” she
said vaguely.

  “What’s the book’s title?”

  “His manuscript. There’s no book. He calls it ‘The Echoes.’”

  “The echoes? What does that mean?”

  “Maybe you should read it and find out.”

  “Can you get me a copy?”

  “Sure. On sale. A mere fraction of what you offered Shirley. Twenty-five thousand.”

  “For a stinking unpublished manuscript?”

  “You want to find your wife or don’t you?”

  “You’re saying the book will tell me where Beth is?”

  Her sly smile was back. “I think it just might explain everything.”

  “Why should I believe that?”

  “Why do you think my daughter was murdered?”

  “Your daughter’s death was suicide, not homicide.”

  “Then why didn’t they find any step stool or chair or anything like that around her? How did she suspend herself from the ceiling all by herself?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You met Shirley. You really believe she hanged herself?”

  Gus didn’t answer, but the woman had a point.

  She leaned closer, elbows on the table, her voice low. “This cult is like a fucking octopus. It’s got arms that reach everywhere. Prisons. Thrift shops. Even perfect little neighborhoods like yours.”

  Gus met her stare. “How soon can I get my hands on that manuscript?”

  “Just as soon as you can get me the cash.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I’ll call you,” she said. “Don’t call me. Don’t come by my house. And don’t you dare tell anyone we talked. I don’t want to end up like my daughter. Understand?”

  “Yeah,” said Gus. “I’m beginning to.”

  They left separately, first Meredith, then Gus a few minutes later. Gus called his investigator from his car phone. “You heard?”

  “Yeah,” said Dex. His car was just a block away. “The wire worked perfectly.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think someone was watching you.”

  “What?”

  “I had my eye on the green Mercury across the street from the hotel. It sat there the whole time you and Meredith talked and then pulled away when you did. Could be FBI. Could be someone else.”

  Gus checked his rearview mirror. Pairs of headlights scattered across three lanes behind him, but in the dark it was impossible to tell if any belonged to a green Mercury. “You think they followed me here or Meredith?”

  “Depends on who they are. And whether Meredith is still part of them.”

  “Meaning she could still be part of the cult?”

  “Think back to the last thing she said to you: ‘I don’t want to end up like my daughter.’ Interesting coincidence that she used almost the same language that was in the letter you got on your windshield.”

  Gus stopped at the traffic light. “I don’t think she’s with the cult anymore, Dex. You heard her words over the wire, but only I could see the anger in her face. She hates this Blechman, the way she ridiculed his writings, emphasizing it wasn’t a book, just a crappy manuscript. If you ask me, she’s even forgiven her daughter for conspiring to kill her. I think she blames the cult for that.”

  “That’s a lot of assumptions,” said Dex.

  “I don’t think it’s an outrageous assumption. Especially the part about Shirley’s death being murder rather than suicide.”

  “I’m with you there,” said Dex.

  “Good. Because if Shirley was killed, that might even explain that note on my windshield this afternoon.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s in Beth’s handwriting, so let’s assume she wrote it. She warned that if I talk to Meredith Borge, she’ll end up like Shirley. That makes no sense if Shirley committed suicide. But it makes total sense if Shirley was murdered.”

  “I would agree with you if she had signed it in her own name. But she signed it as Flora. That sounds like a cult name to me.”

  “That’s my whole point. Someone in the cult forced Beth to write the letter. It’s a warning to me in Beth’s own handwriting that my wife will be killed if I talk to Meredith. It means they’re holding Beth against her will.”

  “Or it means Beth is happy being Flora in her new life with the cult and wants you to back off. Because if her husband keeps snooping around, she’s afraid they might decide she’s more trouble than she’s worth.”

  “I like my theory better.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Dex. “If you’re right, they’ll kill her if they find out you’re talking to Meredith.”

  The traffic light changed. Gus pulled onto the express-way ramp. “If I’m right, she’s as good as dead if I don’t talk to Meredith.”

  Fifty-seven

  The old farmhouse was quiet by day, still as death at night. Occasionally a floorboard would creak in the hall outside the bedroom door. Water could sometimes be heard rushing through old pipes in the wall. The furnace would kick on and rattle against the cold. For Beth Wheatley, those were the familiar sounds of the night.

  That, and the VCR at midnight.

  She lay motionless beneath the blankets. The double bed was in the corner. Her back was to the door, her face to the wall in a windowless room. The television screen provided the only light. It would last just twenty minutes. As it had every night. At the same time. For the past two weeks. This had become a silent nightly ritual—and tonight was no exception.

  The lock clicked and the door opened. The room brightened just a bit with light from the hallway. Beth didn’t stir. The door closed and the room returned to darkness. Heavy boots pounded the wood floor, then halted. She felt watched, as though someone were standing over her. Her heart raced, but she didn’t dare move. After a long minute, she could sense her visitor back slowly away from the bed and rest in the chair facing the television.

  As if on cue, it started.

  For nearly twenty minutes Beth listened in the darkness, lying on her side, her back to the television and her nightly visitor. After fourteen nights she knew the tape by heart. Not the video. Just the audio. She had forced herself never to steal a glance at the screen. She had tried not to listen either, but that was impossible. It was some kind of taped interview. A man and a very frightened woman. The man talked like a psychiatrist, maintaining an even and professional tone as the woman’s story unfolded like a nightmare, a tale of torture and a phallic knife that ended each night with the same horrible crescendo.

  “What happened next?”

  “He yanked the knife from my mouth. Very fast. Cut like a razor.”

  “What then?”

  “He asked me, ‘Do you like the knife?’”

  “Did you answer?”

  “No. So he shouted again: ‘Do you like the knife!’”

  “Did you answer this time?”

  “I just shook my head. Then he shouted again. Say it loud! Say you don’t like the knife! So I did. I shouted back. Over and over, he made me shout it—I don’t like the knife!”

  “Then what?”

  “He whispered into my ear.”

  “What did he say?”

  “‘Next time, be glad it’s not the knife.’”

  Beth cringed beneath the blanket. Experience had taught her that the end of the tape only triggered the worst part. The self-indulgent groaning. The climax and release. Tonight, as on past nights, those sounds filled the room, deep and guttural. She didn’t have to peer out from beneath the sheets to know what was going on. The unmistakable noises sent her imagination racing as to the perverse mind in the chair beside her. One thing, however, her ears were sure of. The intruder was a man.

  The television blackened. The chair squeaked. His boots shuffled across the floor. The door opened and closed behind him. The lock clicked from the outside.

  Again, she was alone in total darkness.

  Andie hardly slept that night. She lay awake troubled by the ease with which Ble
chman had detected things as personal as her adoption and broken engagement. Was it possible he did have some kind of gift? She had heard of people like that, though it seemed just as likely that he had been toying with her, somehow knowing all along she was an undercover agent. Then again, virtually all of his followers were recovering from failed relationships and family trouble of some kind. An experienced palm reader might have done as well as he had.

  At five A.M. there was a knock on the door. Felicia answered it without a word, as though she had been expecting it. A man entered. Andie’s eyes slowly focused. It wasn’t Blechman. It was Tom, the other lieutenant who had spoken with Felicia at Tuesday night’s recruitment meeting—the man whose voice imprint had been identical to hers.

  “Let’s go, Willow.” It took Andie a moment to realize he was talking to her. Andie a.k.a. Kira was now Willow.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Put your clothes on, and let’s go.”

  She was wearing only a nightshirt and skimpy running shorts. Tom caught an eyeful on her way to the bathroom. It was a lecherous glare, something to be expected from one of those fifty-year-old loners who got kissed once a decade and cruised in a van with a bumper sticker that read, IF IT’S A’ ROCKIN’ DON’T COME KNOCKIN’.

  You could use a little work on losing earthly desires, bucko.

  They were out the door in five minutes. Felicia stayed behind.

  Sunrise was more than an hour away. The ground was damp from patchy fog. Their boots made a swooshing sound as they walked through the coarse, ankle-high grass. Tom stopped and lit up a cigarette as they reached a safe distance from the house.

  “They allow smoking here?” asked Andie.

  “You got a problem with it?”

  “It just seems like it would be one of those forbidden self-indulgences.”

  “Rule number one, Willow. Thou shalt not judge thy superiors.”

  Interesting, thought Andie. A smoker. A peeping Tom—literally. Yet his voice imprint had been virtually identical to Felicia’s. He was either a believer with some weaknesses, or a nonbeliever with incredible acting skills. Either way, Andie wanted to explore.

  They continued over a hill toward the chicken coop, where they were greeted by the ammonia-laden odor of fowl excrement and the incessant chirping of hundreds of week-old chicks. Like ants they climbed over each other at various feeders and waterers spaced evenly throughout the coop. Little yellow fuzzy balls, wall-to-wall cuteness. It made Andie think of Easter, till she looked more closely. A few lay dead on the ground. The weak stumbled about, too timid to make a serious charge toward the source of nourishment.