KnockOut

by Catherine Coulter

  “Get out, woman, and open the gate.”

  Joanna pulled her hand from Ethan’s, climbed out of the van. She walked to the gate and opened it.

  Blessed called out of the open window of the backseat, “Stay there until we’re through, then close it again.”

  Ethan drove through and watched her close the gate in the rearview mirror.

  Why have a gate if it wasn’t even locked? If it wasn’t meant to keep anyone out, why then—there had to be a camera in the trees, or an alarm. Each time the gate opened, whoever was at the other end of this road knew someone was coming.

  The road continued to snake upward, then simply stopped in front of a thick stand of pines. They were in low foothills, covered with trees.

  “Get out of the car, Sheriff.”

  Ethan stepped out of the van into air that was still and calm, the bright light of day starting to fade. It was still hot. Had to be near six o’clock.

  Joanna turned to see Blessed wake Autumn.

  The little girl looked dazed. Joanna whirled on him. “Did you drug her, you monster?”

  “Only some sleeping pills I got from the Quik Mart while the sheriff pumped gas. She’s fine. Be quiet. If either of you try to tell her how we got here, I’ll drop you where you stand. Now shut up. The two of you walk on ahead. I’m keeping Autumn with me.”

  Autumn said, “No, I want to go with my mother.”

  “No, you will stay with me. Do you understand?”

  Autumn thought about this, then slowly nodded.

  “Sheriff, walk straight ahead and don’t do anything stupid.”

  Blessed took Autumn’s hand.

  They made their way along a winding narrow path through the trees, and suddenly stepped into a large flat expanse, not natural but cleared.

  “Here,” Blessed said, his voice satisfied. “We’re finally here, Autumn. This place is more special than you can imagine. This is where you belong.”

  Ethan and Joanna stared at a large, ancient three-story barn, the gray paint peeling, rotted boards hanging by nails. It looked as if it had been abandoned for at least a half century.

  Ethan said, “I’d say the tobacco farm is a cover, right, Blessed? Maybe your cult was there once but not now. This lovely old barn must be cult central.”

  56

  “YES, THIS IS TWILIGHT,” Blessed said, a kind of possessive reverence in his voice. “Enjoy your blasphemy, Sheriff. Hey, what are you doing? Why are you looking back toward the woods? Maybe you’re hoping someone followed us?”

  Ethan said, “I just thought I heard something, that’s all. An animal, maybe. I can’t imagine anyone could know where we are.”

  Blessed listened a moment before he shook his head. “No, no one knows. Now, you think you’re going to escape, but you’re not. Fact is, if either of you ends up going anywhere, you won’t even know it.” He laughed, sounding pleased with himself. “Remember when you stopped for gas, Sheriff? I left you pumping? Just after we left the McDonald’s, I knew I’d seen a car that stayed with us too long. I’ll tell you, Sheriff, I couldn’t believe it, but there was the same car sitting off to the side in the station, next to the tire gauge and water hose, with three yahoos in suits inside, trying to act all nonchalant. I simply walked back to their car, had a guy roll down the window, and I stymied him. The other guys went for their guns, but it didn’t matter. I stymied them too. Didn’t matter they were wearing real dark sunglasses.” He laughed. “I guess they were told to try to follow us, right? Well, they didn’t. I do wonder what happened to the Three Stooges. Maybe the gas-station cashier got suspicious when they never moved out and called the cops? You wanna tell me how these guys found us?”

  “I have no clue.”

  Blessed turned to Joanna. “Well, do you know?”

  Joanna said, her voice steady, “No, but evidently the FBI knows about this cult, Blessed, knows where it’s located. So if I were you, I’d be worried. They’ll be coming, Blessed, they’ll be coming.”

  She was holding it together, Ethan thought. Her hair straggled around her face, freckles marched across her nose, her jeans were dirty, her shirt ripped and wrinkled, but she hadn’t given up. Ethan imagined he looked as bad as she did. Actually, now that he thought about it, he thought she looked terrific.

  Blessed looked down at Autumn and smiled. His voice was gentle, admiring. “I know you did that, Autumn, you somehow called that agent at the motel when you were in the bathroom. But he’s not coming, he doesn’t have a clue where we are, and that’s why I made sure you had a nice long nap. If you call him now, it won’t matter because you don’t know where you are.”

  Autumn stared up at him. She said, “You need to shave. All your whiskers are white. You’re old.”

  Ethan decided in that instant that he’d do whatever he had to to keep that little kid in his life. He wanted to watch her grow up, with Joanna—

  Blessed stared at Autumn for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. “You haven’t seen old yet, Autumn. You just wait. Now, if you two want to stay conscious, you walk over to the barn.”

  Joanna didn’t move. “I want Autumn with me.”

  “I want to be with my mama,” Autumn said.

  Blessed stared at her, then released her hand. Autumn ran to her mother. Joanna clutched her child to her, dropped a kiss on her hair, another on her forehead.

  When they reached the barn, Blessed walked ahead of them to the huge set of double doors, so rotted Ethan didn’t know how they were still standing. Blessed pulled the door out enough to slip inside. He stuck his head out. “Come this way.”

  When their eyes adjusted to the shadowed interior, they saw rotted hay bales stacked haphazardly, rusted tractor parts strewn over the rotted wooden floor planks, the parent of the parts, an ancient John Deere tractor, sitting off in a dim corner, missing two tires. The air smelled fetid and stale. At least it wasn’t as hot in here as it was outside. Ethan’s foot crushed down on an animal carcass.

  He realized then that all the display of rot, the rusted machine parts—it was all staged. This was what someone thought an abandoned barn should look like, down to the John Deere tractor.

  They watched Blessed push aside a couple of hay bales and two old car seats, the material covering them long rotted, and kick away straw from the floor, clearing about a four-foot space. He leaned down and pulled on a rusted old handle that was nearly flat against the wood, and a hole appeared in the floor. Blessed stepped back and smiled, waved his hand toward it. Joanna and Ethan looked down onto blackness.

  Blessed reached down into the darkness and pressed some buttons. There came three short beeps, and then light suddenly filled the dark hole, but there was still nothing to see except wooden stairs that led downward. Blessed nodded to them. “The two of you will climb carefully down the stairs. When you get to the bottom, wait for Autumn and me. Don’t forget, I’ve got Autumn, so don’t try anything.”

  Joanna and Ethan climbed down the wooden stairs. They were solid pine, thirty of them; Ethan counted them.

  The stairs ended in a small square room with whitewashed walls and a clean wooden floor. There was a single table with a telephone sitting on it, and nothing else.

  They heard the trap door close above them, the low hum of air-conditioning. The air was cool. It had to take a good-sized generator, Ethan thought, to run this place.

  Blessed walked past them to the phone, picked it up, and said, “The Keeper is here.”

  Joanna arched an eyebrow at Ethan.

  At the end of the small room they watched a panel in the opposite wall slide silently open. Blessed nodded for them to go inside.

  Joanna went first, Ethan close behind her. More than a rotted old barn for the Children of Twilight, Ethan thought. They stopped and stared at the vast, empty white space, almost dizzying it was so white, no other color to break it. The room was maybe forty feet by forty feet, the wooden floor painted as white as the walls and ceiling. Another stage setting, Ethan though
t, this one doubtless meant to represent purity and innocence, maybe a bit of heaven? Or more likely, this was another stage setting to prove to cult members this was a holy place.

  A young black man came through a white door set into one of the walls. He was wearing a white linen shirt and loose white pants, a thin rope tied around his waist. His feet were bare.

  “Hello, Kjell,” Blessed said. “I’ve got her.”

  57

  WINNETT, NORTH CAROLINA

  It was late afternoon when the black FBI Bell helicopter landed at the small airstrip two miles west of Winnett. The mountains were thick around them, and yet it was so hot and humid when Savich stepped out of the helicopter, he wished he could strip down and find a hose. He helped Sherlock out, and both of them stood there a moment, even the hot gush of air from the helicopter blades better than the still, dead air.

  Holding hands, they ducked down and ran toward a small tin building thirty feet away. They turned to see the helicopter lift off. The pilot, Curly Hames, waved to them. They veered off into the shade of the buildings to where a dark green Subaru sat next to a banged-up truck and a rotted-out SUV.

  The keys were in the ignition. Savich gave the interior a tolerant look and turned the key.

  Sherlock sniffed. “The car smells new; that’s big of the field office. Okay, we’re going to meet Cully at the Chevron gas station on Market Street, only about half a mile from Victor Nesser’s apartment on Pulitzer Prize Road. Then we’ll go to Victor’s apartment, meet up with Bernie Benton, and wait until Lissy and Victor show.” She grinned. “Weird name. Turns out that Winnett native Marvin Hemlick won a Pulitzer some forty years ago for writing about a nasty Ku Klux Klan chapter here. Anyway, when last I spoke to Cully, he said he and Bernie had Victor’s place covered, but nothing was happening, and time was moving slow as molasses in this heat and both he and Bernie were getting antsy.”

  She pulled out her cell and dialed Cully’s number. There was no answer, only voice mail. Sherlock frowned, dialed again, got voice mail again. “Why doesn’t he pick up? I told him I’d call the minute we were here. Cully’s known for being so type A, his shoes nearly walk by themselves. What could he be doing?”

  “Do you have Bernie’s cell phone number?” Savich asked as he negotiated a left turn onto Market Street.

  She shook her head. “Let’s get to the Chevron station, see if Cully’s there. Maybe his phone’s dead.” Like either of them believed that, Sherlock thought, and tightened her seat belt. Even the seat belt smelled new.

  “We’ll be there in a minute; hang on, sweetheart.”

  She noticed the countryside was quite pretty as they drove by—tree-covered hills rising slowly to higher hills, and finally they saw the mountains behind them. Pine and oak trees crammed the slopes, enough for a thousand houses, Sherlock thought, without making a dent.

  Savich slowed through Winnett’s small downtown. The three-block center was set squarely on flat land; the townspeople must have long ago taken a bulldozer to smooth it out. Red brick and wooden buildings crowded together along Market Street, and wherever there weren’t buildings, there were trees crowding in. It was quite lovely, really, but it was so hot even in the late afternoon, Savich imagined you could fry spit on the sidewalk.

  The downtown was quiet, dead, only a couple of teenagers milling around outside. Dinnertime, he thought, and escape from the oppressive heat, maybe some hoses going to cool off in the backyards.

  The Chevron sign appeared ahead on a right-hand corner. An old man stood in the doorway of the Quik Mart, arms folded over his chest, watching a young guy pump gas into a white Mustang convertible. There were a couple of cars waiting to be serviced, but there was no sign of Agent Cully Gwyn.

  Savich didn’t pause. “Let’s go over to Pulitzer Prize Road, take a look at Victor’s apartment building. Maybe they’re there, watching, forgot the time, whatever.”

  Sherlock didn’t say anything, but she didn’t like it. She was tense, on edge. She punched her cell phone’s GPS on, and a dulcet female voice told them to turn right in point-five miles. A minute later, they pulled onto Victor’s street in a neighborhood of the small ranch-style houses set back from the road on big yards with pine and oak trees cozied up to the houses. They were lucky it rained here a lot, or the town would never have survived forest fires for so long.

  Pulitzer Prize Road was unexpectedly long. Finally the houses began to peter out, and at the very end of the street, on the very edge of Winnett, stood Victor’s apartment building. It wasn’t much, a two-story brick building with maybe six apartments. But the yard was big and green, like all the other yards, and there was a red brick walkway that led up to the door. There was only one house beyond the apartment building, the grass overgrown, its windows boarded up, obviously vacant. Beyond that decrepit house stretched a narrow two-lane road that disappeared into the thick oak and pine trees. Everything looked limp.

  “If the locals don’t take care,” Sherlock said, looking around, “the forest is going to consume the town. Nothing but oaks and pines everywhere. It looks like they swallow up the road.”

  “I wouldn’t mind sitting under an oak tree about now,” Savich said, looking up at the afternoon sun, hot and high in the cloudless sky, “what with the temperature hovering around a hundred, and the humidity at two thousand. Do you know what the problem is—the sun’s too big down here.”

  “We could join that golden retriever over there snoozing away under that pine tree. Everybody must be huddled around their air conditioners.”

  “If Cully and Bernie are watching the apartment building from close by, they could be inside that empty house,” Savich said. “Do you see anyone? A car? Anything?”

  They looked around carefully, saw nothing but the sun beating down. The trees were utterly still, not a breath of moving air.

  Savich turned the car around and headed back toward town. He parked a couple of blocks from the apartment building, between a Toyota SUV and an F-150 truck. They walked back toward the building, their SIGs pressed against their sides to avoid any panic from passersby. They needn’t have bothered. Not a single soul appeared, not Cully or Bernie either. They could be well hidden, Savich thought, but surely they’d have recognized them, at least recognized Sherlock’s bright hair. This wasn’t good, Savich knew it.

  Savich would swear the air pulsed with heat. He saw the humidity was making Sherlock’s hair curlier. She turned to him. “Why don’t Cully and Bernie let us know where they are?”

  Savich said nothing; what was there to say? He opened the apartment-building front door and stepped into a tiny lobby that held one palm tree and six mailboxes, painted white. The temperature dropped at least thirty degrees.

  “It’s like I’ve died and gone to an ice locker,” she said. She flapped her arms, enjoying it.

  They looked at the mailboxes even though they knew Victor lived in apartment 403, but why was there a number like that in a two-story apartment building?

  “Let’s take the stairs,” he said. “Stay alert.”

  They didn’t meet anyone on the stairs. Savich imagined a lot of people were inside, eating dinner. They heard children arguing over whether to watch an old Star Trek episode or Batman, but no adult voices.

  The hallway was wide and dark, all the apartment doors painted different colors. Victor Nesser’s apartment was at the very end of the second-floor hall. His front door was painted bright green, with big brass numbers—403.

  Sherlock stepped forward, knocked on the door, and waited a moment, her SIG ready. “Mr. Nesser? It’s Clorie Smith, from the Winnett Herald Weekly. I’m here to offer you a full month’s free subscription, four free issues.”

  No answer.

  She knocked again. “Mr. Nesser?”

  No sound, nothing from inside the apartment.

  Savich pressed his ear to the door.

  He didn’t hear anything at first, pressed his ear closer. He heard a muffled sound—a person’s voice? He didn’t wait,
motioned for Sherlock to step back, and he kicked the door in. It flew open, banging against the wall. They went in, fanning their SIGs, and found themselves in a small entry hall, a living room to the right connected to a small dining area and kitchen.

  Empty.

  A muffled voice yelled, “In here!”

  The voice was coming from the bedroom. Savich stepped toward it when the man shouted again, “No! Don’t come in! There’s a bomb and a trip wire!”

  58

  SAVICH FROZE, Sherlock behind him. He called out, “Okay, we’re not moving. Cully, is that you? What bomb?”

  “Just a second, got to get this duct tape off my mouth. Damn, it’s hard to talk without any lips. Okay, listen, the young guy—Victor Nesser—I saw him string a wire across the bedroom doorway, floor level. I guess he didn’t mind I saw him, figured I would see you coming and not be able to do a thing about it. Thank God I finally managed to get the tape off my mouth or we’d all be dead.”

  Savich knelt down and saw the wire, maybe a quarter inch off the floor, stretched taut. He called out, “We’re stepping over it. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay, just humiliated. I’m here, on the other side of the bed. Like I said, I finally got the tape off my mouth, but I’m still tied up. Victor’s got me connected to a wire, too.”

  “Okay, don’t move,” Savich said and walked slowly over to the bed.

  Cully said, “I can see the bomb from here. It’s by the dresser.”

  “Got it,” Sherlock said. “You just don’t move, Cully. Dillon and I are going to check it out.”

  Cully said, “The girl—Lissy Smiley—she was laughing, really enjoying it, crowing that the instant some stupid fed tripped the wire the whole building would go boom—a hundred feet up, burn up the air, maybe all the way to heaven, she said. Then she hooted, doing a Madonna bump and grind, and said something about sending you, Savich, to heaven.” Cully sucked in a breath. “I usually don’t remember exactly what people say, but she was over the top.”