Second Life (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 4)

by D. F. Bailey

  “A visit?” he said. “So you don’t intend to kill us.”

  Another pause filled the air, a moment of uncertainty. A chill ran through the room. Perhaps Kali and Salter had only been here a few hours themselves. Were they on the run?

  “From the article in the eXpress we know that you’re familiar with Jonestown. But what do you really understand about the Reverend Jim Jones?” Kali leaned forward as if this question was important above all others.

  “Apart from the fact that he was a madman?”

  Salter let out a snort of disgust. “Perhaps you’re not the man we were hoping for after all.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” A gasp of exasperation burst from his throat. Now that he could breathe clearly he felt some renewed strength. “And where is Eve? I’m not saying another word until you tell me where Eve is.”

  “All right.” Kali motioned to someone standing behind Finch. “Parker, show him.”

  Parker strolled in front of Finch carrying a computer tablet in his hand. At first Finch thought this might be Nike, but he realized the newcomer was barely out of his teens. He wore a pair of wire-rim glasses and was dressed in a black turtleneck and jeans. The Steve Jobs of cult acolytes. He held the tablet a foot below Finch’s chin, then swept his hand over the screen to bring an image into focus. He recognized Eve, strapped into a chair not too dissimilar from the one that held him in its grasp. However, she still had a hood covering her head. He watched as she rolled her neck to one side. She was alive. On the wall behind her, he noticed a digital clock. The time showed 4:13.

  “What time is it?”

  Kali smiled and checked her watch. “Four-thirteen. You see, she’s alive and well as we speak.” She lifted her wrist so that Finch could see the time.

  “Where is she?”

  “Not far.”

  She put on another gentle smirk. A personal tic, Finch decided. He tried to adjust his right arm to relieve the pressure where the duct tape stuck to his skin. It dawned on him now that Kali might be in a mood to negotiate. She’d revealed enough information about Eve to make him reconsider Kali’s intentions. Perhaps she didn’t intend to kill him after all. So what did she want? He decided to try one more ploy.

  “How can I be sure it’s her? Take the hood off her head.”

  Kali took a moment to consider this. She nodded to Parker who typed a message into the tablet. After a moment the tablet emitted a delicate chime—the sound of a zen bell—and Parker angled the tablet under Finch’s chin again. He could see Eve’s head slump forward, and then from somewhere behind her a hand reached out the of darkness, loosened the knot at her neck and pulled the hood away. Her eyes fluttered open in the half-light. Her mouth was sealed shut with a five-inch strip of duct tape.

  “All right.” Finch let out a sigh of relief. “What do you want from us?”

  “Let’s get back to Jim Jones,” Kali said. “He was far from the madman you suggest. And nothing of the monster the liberal press made him out to be.”

  He adjusted his weight in the chair. “Go on.”

  Kali stood and took a step toward him. “Do you know Confucius?”

  Finch coughed up a laugh. “Not as well as I’d like.”

  She narrowed her eyes and took a few steps to the left and then pivoted back to him. “He came up with a lovely expression. ‘We have two lives. And the second begins when we realize we only have one.’ ”

  Finch nodded. Whatever her game was, he decided to remain silent and let it play out.

  “Perhaps you’ve already had this realization. Perhaps not. Or perhaps just now it’s rising into your consciousness as you sit here with your fate somewhat uncertain.” She gazed into his eyes, then turned again and continued to pace back and forth as she spoke. “In our case, our life realization happened on November 18, 1978. In Jonestown. I was just seven years old. Deacon had just turned twelve.”

  She paused to swing a hand between her and Salter, a gesture of connection and continuity. Salter remained seated, his expression stewing with a look of listlessness.

  “You see that—that was Jim Jones’s genius. He lit a bonfire to illuminate the world. Nine hundred and nine people went to their deaths because of their faith.”

  Her pacing came to a halt as she studied Finch’s face. “There has been nothing like Jonestown since the year 73 at Masada, when nine hundred and sixty Jews committed mass suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Romans.” Her voice rose with a sermonic fervor. “Until 1978 when the members of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project in Jonestown decided not to fall into the pit of greed that is destroying our world. All of them decided—willingly—to give up their second lives!”

  She stood in front of Will, her body rigid with the strident energy of her rant. She peered down at him as if she might be standing on a balcony in some imagined heaven. Finally a look of impatience washed over her.

  “Do you not get that?”

  Finch kept his eyes on her face. In a calm, even voice he said, “Kali, tell me why you’ve brought me here.”

  A long sigh of exhaustion fluttered from her lungs. She swung back to look at Salter, then swept around to Finch again. “All right. If you insist, let’s turn to practical matters.” She tipped her head backwards slightly as if she was about to take up the secular portion of her sermon.

  “I’m going to let you decide if you live or die. Right now. But first tell me something. The last time we met, I urged you to answer the questions in your soul.”

  He knew what she meant. The time when he first grasped her powers of persuasion. He shook his head.

  “A pity,” she murmured.

  Finch sensed that she was preparing something as she walked in a circle before him. Salter rose from his chair and moved to the side so that he stood at a ninety degree angle to Finch. Kali moved beside Salter and pointed to someone standing in the darkness behind Finch.

  “Mr. Benton. Are you ready?”

  Finch heard someone take a step forward. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Prepare yourself. Keep your eyes on me.”

  A chill ran through Finch. He could see that her madness was now in full flush. Where would it end? He heard the sound of a gun cocking.

  “I know you were a bright student at NYU. And at Berkeley. Your mother was a Catholic French Canadian and as a teenager you attended a Catholic high school in Quebec. Am I right?”

  He turned his head toward her and gazed at her in a confused daze. His entire body broke into a heavy sweat. Was one of the bandits standing behind him about to put a bullet through the back of his head?

  “If you can answer this question correctly, you shall live,” she continued. “It’s very simple. Q and A. Now, to earn your second life, Mr. Finch, name the man who was released instead of Jesus on the day of His crucifixion.”

  “Released”—Finch’s lips sputtered—“instead of Jesus?”

  “Yes. You have ten seconds.” Her mouth tightened into a narrow sneer and she fixed her eyes on Benton, as if to give him strength for the moment ahead. “Beginning now.”

  Finch rolled his head backward and then the shock of his impending death gave way to complete emptiness. He took a breath. Another. Then it came to him.

  “Barbarossa.” His eyes blinked open. “Barbarossa!”

  “Barbarossa?” A puzzled look crossed her face. “No. I’m sorry.”

  “I mean Barabbas. It was Barabbas who took his place!”

  “Barabbas,” she whispered. Her eyes widened and she dipped a half step backwards as if a passing stranger had nudged her. “And you don’t even call yourself a believer, do you. Maybe that’s about to change.”

  She nodded at Benton and Finch heard the light click of the revolver hammer as it reset, followed by the creaking of Benton’s shoes on the oak floor as he stepped back into the shadows near the wall.

  In the heavy silence that now descended over him, Finch felt drops of moisture roll down his cheeks. He couldn’t tell if they wer
e tears or the sweat still pouring from his body. Kali watched him struggle as the waves of emotion coursed through him. She leaned forward, her lips inches from his face as if she were about to kiss him.

  “You see? Don’t you see it, Mr. Finch? You are our Barabbas. This is your second life. You are the ghost who will be released.” She turned back to her chair and when Salter sat down she settled beside him.

  “But not just yet.”

  ※

  Finch had lost track of time. As he came back to his senses, when he realized that he would not be shot—at least not yet—hours seemed to pass between then and now. Maybe this was a second life. He glanced around the room as if he needed to find his bearings. Kali Rood had taken her seat in the chair opposite him. Salter had disappeared. There were no sounds coming from the shadows behind him. His arms and legs tugged at the duct tape binding him to the chair.

  “What time is it?” he asked. From somewhere above he heard people walking a hallway in pairs, their footsteps padding lightly on the wood flooring.

  She shook her head. “The time doesn’t matter.”

  “I want to see Eve again.”

  “No. No more favors.” She shifted her weight on the chair and pulled the hem of her blouse to ensure that it covered the waist of her capris. “I’m about to explain why you are here. Why you are still alive, Mr. Finch.” She tipped her head to one side. “I know you’ve seen the ghost list.” She paused. “The roll of names.”

  “Ghost list,” he repeated in a hollow voice. Until now he’d never thought the kill sheet might have a name.

  “Yes. The list of men and women attempting to impede Revelation Now.”

  Revelation Now. So that confirmed the connection to the Twitter ID. @r3v3lationnow. The FBI had ordered its elimination but the link from that page still led to the list of condemned men and women.

  “As you know, your name was on that roll. But two minutes ago I instructed Parker to remove it. You have become our Barabbas. You have been released.”

  Finch tried to smile, to offer some expression of thanks. But it was impossible. The best he could do was to stifle a bleak sob. He blinked his eyes as if he was waking from a nightmare and tried to set aside his inner rage. He’d been spared once, no need to tempt her again.

  “And for this you expect me to—”

  “I expect you to testify. You will record the heartbeat of Revelation Now as it unfolds. And once you record what has happened here, you will publish it. Then the world will know that another beacon of faith as been lit. But that this time, the beacon is one of righteous action. Of the faithful striking against the damned. That is why you were chosen.”

  Finch held his head as steadily as he could. But the scale of her insane delusions shook him. The power and certainty in her voice felt so convincing. Was it possible? Were thousands of her followers marching down this same path of madness?

  “And please, don’t ask.” She smiled as if she could read his thoughts, as if she knew them before he did. “I know you will do this, Mr. Finch. You will not refuse, you see, because of Eve. Such a perfect name for your mate.”

  He looked away, now feeling completely confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “You saw her there.” She waved a hand to the computer tablet next to him. “In the chair, just like yourself. One of the faithful can take her life at any time. Anywhere. If you fail to report the truth of Revelation Now within a month, the faithful will take her.”

  “Within a month. A month from when?”

  “From tonight.” She said this with a quiet finality that was broken by the sound of a door swinging open behind him.

  “Kali! We’ve got to go!” Salter swept into the room and stood beside her. His face was twisted with panic.

  “What is it?”

  “The police. Three wagons coming up the switchback!”

  The sound of an alarm began to pulse from the basement. It rose through the air in a rhythm of three, resonant bursts. The rounded sound of a heavy brass bell: bong-bong-bong. It paused, then the warnings repeated again and again.

  Her face blanched and a shudder rolled through her body. She stood up and braced a hand on Salter’s shoulder. “What? Now?”

  “Yes, yes!” he said, the urgency in his voice conveying more determination than panic.

  Before she fled the room, Kali turned back to Finch. “Remember: one month,” she warned him. And then, quoting from memory she said, “Or the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.”

  ※

  The panic, the scramble to escape, and the screams of desperation were muted by the timber walls and thick oak floors surrounding him. A rush of fear flooded through Will as he struggled to loosen the duct tape that secured him to the chair in the great room of the lodge. Then he heard the commands coming from a bullhorn somewhere outside the building.

  “This is the FBI. You are completely surrounded. If you have weapons, disarm yourself now and come out to the driveway with your hands in the air. Do not attempt to resist arrest.”

  As the minutes passed he heard feet running through the corridors, and above him three or four people scrambling into a corner room where they began a heated argument. Were they trying to devise a plan? He tried to make out what they were saying, but he couldn’t understand a word.

  A minute later a second plea from the FBI filled the air. “Come out now with your hands in the air. You will not be harmed if you do not resist arrest.”

  He wondered when the police would attempt to breach the locks on the doors. Perhaps they would burst through the glass windows of the long wall beside him. In the rising dawn he could now make out the silhouettes of a few trees beyond the lodge. The gray light seeping beneath the distant clouds gave him a sense of direction. The windows faced east, and from the upward slant of sunlight he could tell that the lodge was perched on a hill.

  The warnings from the FBI had stopped and the eerie stillness made him nervous. The deep ringing of the heavy bell had ceased. Everyone must be preparing, he told himself. The cops, the cult of true believers. Kali and Salter. And whoever kept guard on Eve. Where was she? He turned his wrists to try to loosen the duct tape but the bands wouldn’t give. “Mexican steel,” his son Buddy had called it. A cynical joke from his little boy. Where had he heard that? Maybe from the guys on his baseball team. The thought of his dead son emerging here brought a sense of impotence to him. Why was he thinking of Buddy now? Maybe because it would all end in the next few seconds. Maybe he would join—

  He heard a muffled wail cut through the ceiling.

  “Ohhh … Oh God!”

  Then another cry.

  “Ah-ah-ah-AAHHHH!”

  Soon a cacophony of bitter screaming filled the lodge. Dozens of people calling out. But none called for help or relief. There were only wordless cries of pain. Bellows that quickly fell to whimpers and then joined in a chorus of low, bitter moans.

  A moment later, Finch heard the door behind him slip open and a series of footsteps creep along the edge of the wall. He turned his head, but saw nothing.

  “Who’s there?” Finch whispered as if he were part of a conspiracy.

  More footsteps.

  “Who is it?” His voice insistent this time.

  “It’s me.”

  The shadow came into view as it slipped past the fireplace toward the bank of windows. Parker, the Steve Jobs look-alike.

  “What’s happening?”

  Parker tiptoed to the edge of the first window and settled the side of his head against the wood frame. He stood there a moment, studying something outside.

  “Look, Parker. I know these cops. They’re FBI from the New York office. I’m sure I can help you if you cut me loose.”

  Parker studied him as though he might be considering it. Weighing his options. Then he turned his attention back to the window. In the dawn light they could see the forest on the hill where the pine trees thinned as they backed onto a ridge. There must be a cliff below the bank, Finch
told himself and he tried to relieve the tension on the duct tape once more.

  “Parker, at least tell me where Eve is. Is she upstairs?” He felt a renewed desperation. “What was all that noise up there? Is Eve upstairs?”

  Parker gulped in some air. “They’re dead,” he said with a haunted look.

  Will tried to recall if he’d heard any shooting. Had he missed something? “But … how?”

  Parker’s already thin face seemed to distend and lengthen as if the horror of what he’d seen had physically distorted his countenance. “They actually drank it.”

  “Who drank it?” Finch wailed. “Is Eve dead?”

  Parker ignored the questions and turned back to the window. He took a sideway step toward the glass door.

  Finch could now distinguish a few shapes and shadows outside. He could see a broad, covered veranda layered with dew that reflected the morning light. Beyond that stood a log railing that surrounded the deck.

  Parker took another breath and turned the door handle. It eased open and he stepped outside. Then from the sides of the house two men in camo fatigues and combat helmets swept onto the deck and slammed into him in a cross-tackle take-down—one high, one low—that drove all three men through a window pane and back into the great room. A wave of shattered glass sprayed across the floor and onto Finch’s feet. After a brief struggle the two men wrestled Parker under control and cuffed his hands behind his back.

  When he was secured three others poured through the open door. A man and woman followed, their pistols drawn in a two-handed grip. John Vickers and Calinda Cruz.

  “Finch—is that you?” Vickers barked at him.

  Stunned by the speed and violence of the attack, Finch couldn’t find his voice.

  “Finch! Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” he growled. “Damn it, cut me loose.”

  Cruz drew a folding knife from her jacket pocket, slid the blade from the handle with her thumb nail and cut the duct tape at Finch’s ankles and wrists. He tried to stand and immediately felt the blood drain from his head. In a dizzying moment he grasped the back of the armchair to steady himself. Cruz braced Will’s arm, but Finch jerked his hand away with a look that implied he didn’t need any help.