VELOCITY

by Jude Hardin

  I didn’t feel too chipper, but I felt like I could function. I drove my rental car to Pete Strong’s house and called Juliet while I waited in the driveway.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow,” she said. “Our flight is at eight-fifteen tomorrow night, and we’ll land in L.A. at around eleven Friday morning. It’ll probably be five or six by the time we make it to Florida.”

  “That’s a long flight.”

  “I know. And there’s a long layover in Los Angeles. Over an hour.”

  “I should be home before you guys,” I said. “I’ll pick you up at the airport and we’ll go out and celebrate.”

  “Oh, Nicholas. I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Can’t wait to see you, babe. Can I talk to Brittney for a minute?”

  “Sure. Hold on.”

  Someone tried to call while I was waiting for Brittney to come to the phone. I let it go to voice mail.

  “Daddy!”

  “Hi sweetheart.”

  “We thought you were dead or something. What happened?”

  “It’s a long, long story. I’ll tell you about it when we get home.”

  “Was that Derek guy who broke in the house and cut us with the Harvest Angels?”

  “He was, but I think he was kidnapped and brainwashed. I don’t think he joined of his own volition.”

  “Why does your voice sound funny?”

  “Does it?”

  “Yeah. Are you drunk?”

  “Just tired I guess. You keeping up with your schoolwork?”

  While she was telling me about her paper for English class, Denise pulled into the driveway and parked beside me. Our eyes met through the car windows, and she gave me a little smile. It was obvious she had been crying.

  “And I met this really cool guy here,” Brittney said. “His name’s Rey, and he’s a really good basketball player. Dad, you would love it here. It’s beautiful.”

  “Guess I’ll have to go sometime.”

  “Yeah! Maybe we could all take a vacation here this summer after graduation.”

  “Maybe. Listen, someone here’s waiting to talk to me, so I need to go. I’ll see you guys in a couple of days.”

  “Love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you too.”

  I had talked to Denise before I left L.A. The local authorities had raided Brother John’s compound in the middle of the night. They arrested everyone and confiscated a huge cache of weapons and explosives. Now they were faced with the daunting task of sorting through the members and determining which ones were there by choice and which ones had been abducted and brainwashed like me. They found Pete’s body in a shallow grave not far from the tree he’d been hung from.

  I got out of the car and gave Denise a hug.

  “I wanted to give you this,” I said.

  I handed her Pete’s Rolex, and she burst into tears. I hugged her some more.

  “Come on in,” she said. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  We walked inside and I followed Denise to the kitchen. I sat at the table while she scooped some coffee into the filter basket and poured some water into the reservoir. She came over and sat across from me while it brewed.

  “We tried to find you guys,” she said. “We tried so hard. I had every one of our investigators working on it twenty-four-seven.”

  “I know you tried. Don’t blame yourself.”

  “Some of my friends think I should blame you, for getting Pete involved in the first place.”

  “Do you?”

  “No. Pete did what he wanted to do. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was convinced it was the right thing.”

  “I’m so sorry it turned out the way it did.”

  “I had him cremated today. That’s what he wanted. The memorial service is tomorrow at four.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  The coffee pot started gurgling and Denise got up and poured us each a cup. She asked if I wanted cream and sugar, then remembered from the restaurant that I took it black. She sat back down and we sipped in silence for a couple of minutes. The coffee was very good.

  “They found Virgil Lamb,” she said.

  “Alive?”

  “Barely. But yes, he’s in the Intensive Care Unit.”

  “What about Joe, his grandson?”

  “Buried not far from where they found Pete.”

  “I wonder if it would be possible for me to talk to Virgil.”

  “Why would you want to now?”

  “Just a few things I’d like to get straight. Like how Brother John was able to enter Virgil’s house on Thanksgiving Day, butcher his wife and daughter-in-law and kidnap him and Joe and Derek Wahl and walk out practically unscathed. I’d like to know how, and I’d like to know why.”

  Denise looked thoughtfully at the steaming black liquid in her cup. “You know Ted Grayson’s under investigation, right?”

  “I implicated him in the report I filed in L.A. I figured he set me up. I also told them about Tim, the state trooper who drove me back to the compound after I escaped.”

  “They arrested him,” Denise said.

  “Good. I hope this puts an end to the Harvest Angels.”

  “That was your goal from the beginning, and it looks like you succeeded.”

  “Everything comes with a price, though. This time it was your husband. I want you to know he won’t be forgotten.”

  “Can I get you some more coffee?”

  “Thanks, but I need to get going.”

  I got up and she walked me to the door and we embraced, longer and tighter than necessary. It wasn’t the embrace of a friend consoling a friend. It was the embrace of a man and a woman who wanted each other, who needed each other.

  “I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she said.

  “Denise—”

  “I know you’re married. I know. All I’m asking for is one night.”

  She was a very beautiful woman. Smart and sexy, with a passion for life you don’t see every day. All she was asking for was one night, but it never ends up that way. One night turns into two, and two into three. Lives are wrecked and hearts are broken, all because of a chemical reaction in the brain that compels attraction. Technically, I’d already cheated on my wife once during this excursion, in Hollywood with Alana the receptionist. But I wasn’t myself at the time. At the time, I didn’t even know I had a wife. There was no need for Juliet to know about that. Ever. It was meaningless, and it would only hurt her to know. With Denise, though, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be meaningless. I had a feeling if I stayed with her for one night, I might never leave.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I turned and took a deep breath and walked out the door and didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I needed a shot. I wondered if that was part of the reason I’d walked away from Denise with such little hesitation. What I really wanted was back at the motel. I was starting to second-guess my own motivations, my scruples, and my sanity.

  Before leaving the driveway I checked the voicemail that had come in while I was talking to Brittney. It was from a state police detective in Mont Falcon named Rex Atbury. He told me to give him a call, so I did.

  “I got your number from Greg Sloan out in Hollywood,” he said. “We extradited John Martin, and we’d like for you to come to the station here in Mont Falcon and help us fill out the report.”

  “You want me to come now?”

  “First thing in the morning, if you could. Around eight?”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  I decided to drive on down and spend the night in Mont Falcon. It would put me that much closer to Florida, and I wouldn’t have to fight the morning traffic in Nashville. I’d promised Denise that I would be at Pete’s memorial service, but I thought it might be awkward now after our scene at the door. I decided it would be best if I never saw Denise Strong again.

  On the way back to the motel I passed by the hospital and I remembered what Denise had said,
that Virgil Lamb was a patient there in the Intensive Care Unit. I made a U-turn and pulled into the visitors’ parking area.

  I was badly in need of a fix, but I figured this might be my only chance to meet Virgil and get some information from him. I walked into the main entrance, followed the signs, took an elevator to the sixth floor. I followed some more signs and navigated a confusing labyrinth that finally led me to the ICU nurses’ station. I talked to a clerk at the desk.

  “I’m looking for a patient named Virgil Lamb,” I said.

  She looked on her computer screen. “You know he’s a police hold, right?”

  “I just want to talk to him for a few minutes.”

  “Prisoners aren’t allowed to have visitors. Sorry.”

  “Can I talk to his nurse?”

  She tapped a fingernail on a touch screen, picked up a telephone receiver and said, “Sharon, there’s someone at the desk who would like to speak with you.”

  I stood there and examined the design on the floor tiles while I waited. My hands were in my pockets to keep them from trembling. Doctors and nurses scurried to and fro with a sense of urgency. They talked to each other over binders and clipboards, and there was a vibe that what they were doing really mattered. And it did, of course. They literally held people’s lives in their hands. I wondered if I could deal with that kind of stress on a daily basis. I didn’t think so.

  A tall slender woman wearing blue scrubs and a stethoscope came and shook my hand and introduced herself as Sharon.

  “What’s his condition?” I asked.

  “Are you family?”

  “I’m his son,” I lied. “Just came up from Florida.”

  “He’s comatose,” Sharon said. “On a ventilator. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but we’re really not expecting him to pull through.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was in that compound they raided down by Black Creek. Some kind of cult. I’m sure you heard about it on the news.”

  “Yeah. I know about that. But why is he in a coma?”

  “They found him in a room by himself, strapped into a dentist’s chair. He was emaciated. He’d been tortured and given all sorts of drugs. The cops are still trying to sort it all out.”

  “If I leave my number, will you be sure to contact me if there’s any change in his condition?”

  “Sure. I’m really sorry we can’t let you in to see him.”

  “I understand.”

  I wrote my cell number on a piece of paper and she took it and put it on Virgil’s chart.

  When I got back to the motel, I cooked another dose of smack and injected it into my PICC line. There were only three of the foil packets left. I thought about calling the guy from the bus station and scoring some more before leaving Nashville, but I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to find elsewhere. Especially the black tar.

  I packed my things and checked out and took the interstate south to Mont Falcon. It was only fifty miles, but I almost nodded off a couple of times on the way down. I stopped at a gas station and bought coffee and a candy bar.

  The Mont Falcon motel looked a lot different in the springtime. There were flowers blooming and butterflies flittering and crape myrtles towering past the eaves. Moe’s Ribs had a new paint job and a new sign, and the cool mountain air was rich with the scents of jasmine and barbecued meat.

  Beulah was sitting in her chair at the front desk. When I walked in she got up and stood at the computer and asked if she could help me.

  “It’s me,” I said. “Nicholas Colt.”

  “Oh!” She came out from behind the desk and gave me a hug. “I didn’t recognize you without the beard. And your hair’s a lot shorter. I heard your name on the news the other day and I said, ‘Hey, I know him.’ What an exciting time you’ve had!”

  “Exciting’s not the word for it.”

  “Are you heading back to Florida?”

  “Yeah. I’m only here for one night.”

  She went back to her computer. “You want your old room back? It’s available.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I handed her my debit card and she swiped it and gave it back to me along with the room key. She said to come back to the office and chat after a while if I could, and I said I would try. I walked to the room and opened the door and was pleasantly surprised to see that the walls had been painted and that new carpeting had been put down. Gone was the smell of stale tobacco smoke, and the framed print of ducks flying over a pond had been replaced with a copy of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. I was impressed. I opened the door and looked and there was one of those red circles with a line through it over a picture of a cigarette. I hadn’t noticed it on the way in.

  I even had a signal on my cell phone. They must have finally put that tower up.

  I took my shoes off and got on the bed and leaned against the headboard and switched on the television. I watched some news for a while and part of a baseball game, and then I remembered it had been quite a while since I’d eaten. I didn’t particularly want to go to Moe’s Ribs, but it was the only restaurant in the vicinity and it wouldn’t have been practical to get groceries since I was leaving the next morning. I put my shoes back on and walked over there and sat at a booth. A pretty young waitress named Kelly brought me a glass of water with a lemon wedge in it and gave me a menu to look at but I already knew what I wanted. I ordered a full rack of ribs and a baked potato and salad. There were some pies on display in a glass case on the counter, and I was already thinking about a slice of apple with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top for dessert.

  After dinner I went back to the room and gave myself a shot and fell asleep watching television.

  And for the first time in forty years, I dreamt about The Potato Man.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  When I was seven or eight years old, I started having recurring nightmares featuring a potato with a face and arms and legs. The Potato Man. He had big horse-like teeth and would chase me all over the house. I was scared to death of him. One of my friends was in my dream one time and he caught The Potato Man and tried to squeeze the life out of him, but The Potato Man bit my friend in the palm of his hand and my friend said the bite burned like fire.

  The Potato Man would always tell me something, some bit of profound knowledge that I couldn’t remember when I woke up. That was the strangest part of it all. Here was this lightning-quick tuber with acid for saliva, and in the end he turned out to be some sort of ethereal soothsayer.

  I woke up sweating in the motel bed, and just like when I was a kid The Potato Man had told me something extremely important that I couldn’t remember.

  I switched the television off and got up and took a shower and put my one fresh change of clothes on and stepped out into the misty dawn. I wanted to get my meeting with the police detective over with so I could start the nine-hour drive home. I only I had two foil packets left, but I figured they would last me until evening when I could find a dealer in Jacksonville. In a pinch I could always prowl around Atlanta for a while, but I didn’t think I would need to.

  The state police substation was just outside of town. I got there a few minutes before eight. The desk sergeant escorted me down a long hallway to a door that said HOMICIDE. Rex Atbury sat at an oak desk scarred with cigarette burns and coffee rings.

  “Come on in,” Atbury said.

  The sergeant left and closed the door. Atbury motioned for me to have a seat.

  “Hope I’m not too early,” I said.

  “Early is good. I like early. You want some coffee?”

  “I had a cup on the way over. But thanks.”

  He opened a notebook and took a pencil from a blue ceramic caddy on the desk.

  “This shouldn’t take long,” he said. “I just wanted to go over a few things with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “How long have you known John Martin?”

  “I first encountered him three years ago down in Florida. He was part of a cult called the Chain of
Light. Their militant branch was called the Harvest Angels, and he was part of that. I was instrumental in shutting the whole deal down. A bunch of people were arrested, but Brother John slipped through somehow.”

  “So how did you manage to run into him again in Tennessee?”

  “An old girlfriend in Florida met me for dinner one night and told me her brother had been missing for over a year. Her brother was Derek Wahl. She wanted me to come up here and take a look around, but I’d allowed my PI license to go inactive and I didn’t really have any interest in the case until she told me about the slanted crucifixes carved into the victims’ foreheads.”

  “The murders at the Lambs’ place,” Atbury said.

  “Right. A client of mine in Florida was killed and marked with the same kind of wound. The perpetrator turned out to be a member of the Harvest Angels, so I figured the tilted cross thing might be some kind of calling card. That’s why I came up here. I did some legwork and talked to some people and decided the murders were probably a copycat. But when I got home, Derek Wahl was there about to kill my wife and daughter. He cut crosses in their foreheads, so that’s when I knew—”

  “That Derek was part of the cult.”

  “Yes. But now I think he was probably brainwashed, like I was.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “He was a cop. He was called to the Lambs’ residence for a domestic disturbance. That’s when he went missing. Brother John kidnapped him and brainwashed him and sent him to Florida to kill my family.”

  “How do you know Derek wasn’t in on the whole thing?”

  “The nine-one-one call is on record. Somebody made the call, the dispatcher sent Derek to the house, and—”

  “Derek was the only cop on duty in Black Creek that day,” Atbury said. “Think about it. He could have had someone make the nine-one-one call, or he could have made it himself from a pre-paid cell phone.”

  “I guess it could have happened like that.”

  “And don’t you think it’s just an incredible coincidence that you were drawn into it the way you were? Your ex-girlfriend just happened to have a brother who just happened to belong to a new cell of the cult you shut down three years ago, and the leader of that cell just happened to be the man you tortured and left for dead in the woods, the man who blames you for his face being devoured by fire ants.”