Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  Of the dozen questionable files the Nazi had saved to Diggs’ desktop for easy reference, nine I identified immediately: stories Diggs had either finished or been working on over the past couple of years. Three others were encrypted, and apparently no one thus far had been able to break that encryption. One was labeled simply ‘Hood,’ but I knew it immediately: that would be Mitch Cameron, our hooded man. I couldn’t identify the other two.

  “You can try these two,” I called over my shoulder. The Nazi returned, Juarez on her heels.

  “You’re sure about the others?” she asked.

  “Positive,” I said. “And I’m assuming you’ve already found the primary folder he had.”

  “Of course,” she said, like I’d suggested something completely idiotic. “It’s mostly names and newspaper clippings. He’s very thorough.”

  “He’s good at what he does,” I said.

  For just a second, I thought I saw a glimmer of humanity in her eyes. “We wouldn’t be doing this if he wasn’t.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three - Diggs

  05:30:49

  When I came to, it was to a red glow and nausea and the cotton-throated feel of chemicals in my blood.

  “Diggs?” someone whispered. I opened my eyes wider, searching for the source. The world came into focus and suddenly Danny was there, kneeling beside me.

  “Where the hell are we?” I asked. I tried to sit up. I failed. My hands were bound behind my back, plastic ties cutting into my wrists.

  “Give yourself a minute,” Danny said. “It’ll get better—you’ve just gotta adjust.”

  My synapses weren’t firing right. I stayed where I was and counted down from ten, slowly, before I finally forced myself upright.

  “If you’re gonna puke, do it that way,” Danny said. He nodded toward my right. My stomach rolled at the stench.

  For the first time, I realized we weren’t alone. I looked around, trying to focus on the details. About a dozen people were gathered in the small space. The dirt floor was damp and cool beneath me, but the rest of the room was suffocatingly warm. The entire scene was lit by a bare red bulb mounted above a very solid-looking steel door.

  “Who else is here?” I asked.

  “Casey,” Danny said. “A friend of mine from this band—”

  I nodded. “I know who she is.”

  “Right,” Danny said. “Yeah, she told me you guys talked. And there’s a couple kids from school.” He lowered his voice. “And there are some other guys, too. It’s not a good crew, Diggs.”

  He wasn’t kidding. I counted at least three tweakers just going into withdrawal, another couple of burly guys with a look in their eye that intimated deep-seated anger and a tradition of violence. I thought of the shacks we’d come across the day before: crosses burning in the front yard, trash and debris inside. We’d already found the kids… Apparently, this was what had happened to the adults.

  “So, I’m assuming you don’t know where we are,” I said. The nausea was fading, and with it that sense of panic. I was alive. So was Danny.

  That was something.

  “We don’t know,” Danny said. “They only bring us here while we’re out of it. No idea how long it takes—we reckon we’re not far out of town, though.”

  “Somebody’s cellar, most likely,” someone else said. A teenage boy with dirty gauze on one side of his face, a yellowish fluid seeping through the bandage. I recognized him immediately: the boy I’d spoken with about his friend just after the explosion Thursday night.

  Danny shook his head. “You kiddin’? How many houses you know with underground rooms and halls and passages that go on forever? It’s gotta be something else. Rick did this project about all the places in Justice with secret tunnels underneath them. This has to be one of those.”

  “How many people are here?” I asked.

  “You make eleven,” Danny said. “I was alone for a long time, then they brought a few folks in. They been throwin’ ’em in pretty steady for the past few hours, though.”

  For the first time, I noticed a timer mounted beside the door, digital numbers counting backward.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Danny didn’t say anything for three seconds—I watched them tick by in fire engine red. Then:

  “That’s all the time we got,” he said. “I don’t know what happens when the numbers run out, but I get the feeling it won’t be good. The reverend said we had to make our peace. Beg forgiveness.”

  I stared at the clock as the seconds counted down:

  05:09:20, 05:09:19… Five hours till midnight, and whatever Barnel had promised came to pass.

  I tried to get my head back in the game. Five hours wasn’t a lot to work with, but it was something.

  “What about sounds?” I asked.

  “There was a boiler room—heard that pretty clear. Saw it, too. And there’s music once you’re outside this room.”

  That brought me out of my stupor. “What kind of music?”

  “Good stuff, actually,” he said, sounding surprised. “They were playin’ Blonde on Blonde, I think, when Jenny Burkett come to get me. Then maybe Chuck Berry.”

  “So, nothing religious?”

  “Nope. It’s not coming from them—one of the guys got mad about it when he was takin’ me.”

  I felt a sudden surge of hope. Blonde on Blonde would have made Jake’s top twenty-four list without a doubt. As would Chuck Berry—probably The Great Twenty-Eight. Most of the area had no power, so what were the chances we were in someone’s basement while they cranked WKRO? Slim, at best. It was a good lead, I was sure of it. I just wasn’t sure where it was leading.

  The rest of what he’d said suddenly clicked. “Hang on—you said Jenny Burkett? She’s here?”

  I wasn’t actually surprised to hear the name: from the start it had seemed like too much of a coincidence that Wyatt and Roger Burkett were last seen at Jenny Burkett’s place. Add to that the fact that the sheriff made no effort to bring her in and it only made sense.

  Danny lowered his eyes and nodded. “She’s how come I’m here in the first place… I heard her whisperin’ to me outside Casey’s place. When you see her, you’ll get it. You take one look at her, hear a little sweet nothin’ from that pretty mouth, and you’ll risk just about anything for a taste.”

  I let that go. I’d been seventeen before. If memory served, there weren’t a lot of women on the planet for whom I wouldn’t have risked anything if I thought the promise of sex—or anything close to it—was on the table.

  “Do you know who else is behind this?” I asked. “Have you talked to Barnel?”

  “We all talked to the preacher,” the other teenage boy said. “You’ll get your chance soon enough. Gotta make your confession. He don’t mention anybody else, though. Just him and Jesus.”

  “Well—them and Jenny,” Danny agreed.

  “She’s been draggin’ us back and forth, doin’ whatever Barnel wants,” Danny continued. “There’s a big guy, but I haven’t seen his face. So far we make out one other guy besides Barnel, but we reckon there must be more.”

  “And you don’t recognize any voices?”

  “Nope, not so far. Seems like they know what they’re doin’, though. They know how to keep us in our place, keep everybody quiet.”

  Yet another sign of the organization Blaze had been talking about earlier. There was no way in hell Jesup Barnel could pull this off on his own. I set aside the maddening question of who he was working with, and focused on more pressing issues.

  “Have you looked for a way out?” I asked.

  “No,” Danny said with a practiced roll of the eyes. “We been sitting here playin’ Tic Tac Toe, hopin’ for a miracle.”

  “No need to get snippy,” I said. “What’d you find?”

  ”Not much,” he said. “There’s just the one door leading in here. Floor’s dirt. Walls are cement. I can’t find no wires or pipes, so wherever we are, we’re far enough out of the way that they don�
��t put the electrical or the plumbing through here. We got the bare bulb and our countdown clock. Not much to work with.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t much to work with at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Solomon

  04:45:11

  I started to panic at around seven o’clock that night. It wasn’t that I was all that calm before then, of course… I was just much, much less calm by the time seven o’clock rolled around. Jessie Barnel still hadn’t come to, which didn’t bode well. We’d gone through city hall, the wreckage of Billy Thomas’s old home, the old farmhouse where Reverend Barnel was raised, the church where he first started preaching, the church where Billy Thomas took his first communion. We had Feds and the National Guard and sniffing dogs and everything in between, scouring the entire county.

  And still, we had nothing.

  There was one more lead I’d been avoiding up to this point—partly because I knew the Feds had already been all over it. And partly because I really, really didn’t want to go there.

  I couldn’t see my way clear of avoiding it any longer, though. I got up from my seat in front of the computer and found Blaze, standing beside a giant interactive map of the county. You could barely see the actual map for all the dots and dashes and highlighted lines covering it. She looked up when she saw me.

  “You have anything?” she asked.

  “No. But I have an idea.” I hesitated. She raised an eyebrow, a look in her eye that suggested I’d do well to tell her that idea sooner rather than later. “You said you have video footage of Barnel’s rituals—of him branding those boys in the church?”

  “That’s over a thousand hours of tape, Erin.”

  “I know that,” I agreed. “I don’t need to see all of it. Just four of the rituals: Marty Reynolds, Wyatt Durham, Roger Burkett…and Diggs.”

  “We’ve looked at them all. I don’t know how helpful they’ll be. And Diggs’ tape... ” She hesitated. “Well, let’s just say it’s not for the faint of heart.”

  So, I’d been right: she had watched the tape. “It doesn’t matter. I’d still like to see them.”

  “I’ll have someone get them for you.”

  They set me up with a VCR and an old TV in a cubicle in the corner. I set my pen and paper down. Put on giant headphones. Turned on the TV.

  Marty Reynolds was thirteen when he was ‘exorcised,’ back in 1973. The A/V equipment was primitive back then: terrible sound, fuzzy picture. Reverend Barnel’s hair hadn’t gone grey yet, and he was carrying a few less pounds. Otherwise, he was pretty much the same lunatic I’d seen at Miller’s Field the other night.

  The service took place in Redemption Hall, at Barnel’s compound—though in those days, Redemption Hall wasn’t nearly as tricked out as what I’d seen the other day. There was a pulpit up front, rows and rows of folding chairs, and that same torturous dentist’s chair I’d seen before, equipped with leather straps on both sides.

  Marty was a big kid for his age. The ritual was hard to watch, but not extraordinary: it started with him being led in, stripped down to his boxers, and then strapped into the chair. Barnel asked him his sins. He didn’t put up a fuss, copping to a few minor infractions and a recent theft within five minutes. He renounced Satan. Barnel branded him. Afterward, there was a hatred so deep in Marty’s eyes when he looked at Barnel that I wondered how the preacher was still alive today. The crowd whooped and hollered and cheered. Barnel’s lovely assistant—a gorilla-sized goon Barnel called Brother Hollis—unstrapped Marty and released him back into the wild.

  Wyatt’s ceremony was the same—the main difference being that he actually seemed genuinely remorseful for his sins. Those sins were hardly extraordinary: mostly lying and carousing and smoking cigarettes. Hardly worthy of the Barnel brand, in my estimation. By this time, it was 1984. Brother Hollis was gone, and a much younger Brother Jimmy—Barnel’s boy—had taken his place.

  Danny’s was one of the more recent tapes, obviously, transitioning from video to digital. The ritual was still performed in Redemption Hall, with the Hall shown in the video looking much closer to the one I’d seen: stadium seating, red carpet, the works. The same dentist’s chair was still set up in the middle of the action, but the video equipment and everything else had seen a major upgrade.

  Mae, Wyatt, and Rick stood beside the reverend while the ceremony took place. Brother Jimmy led Danny in. The kid was a couple years younger in this, wearing only his boxer shorts, and he seemed a hell of a lot more calm than I expected. I waited for him to fight. He didn’t. He didn’t cry, either. He recited his sins and renounced the devil like he was reading a script. The reverend definitely wasn’t happy with the lack of pizzazz, but there wasn’t a lot he could do.

  Then, I caught something just before Barnel lowered the brand to Danny’s chest. I backed the tape up, and slowed it down.

  Mae and Rick were completely rapt—mesmerized, even. Wyatt, on the other hand, looked like he was in that damn chair with his son. Just before the iron hit Danny’s skin, I saw Wyatt mouth something to him. It didn’t take long to put it together once I put the sound on: Wyatt was mouthing the words, just before Danny said them. Coaching him on how best to get through everything Barnel was putting him through.

  Contrary to what Mae might have believed, I suspected Wyatt hadn’t been so keen on Reverend Barnel after all.

  That brought me to Diggs’ tape. Watching it felt like a betrayal—it was the last thing he’d want me to see, I was sure of it. The last thing he’d want anyone to see. I couldn’t think of another way, though.

  I pushed the tape in.

  He was so small.

  Twelve—a short, skinny kid with a mop of blond curls and the attitude of someone a whole lot bigger.

  Brother Jimmy brought him to the table. He’d already been stripped down to a pair of Bugs Bunny boxer shorts, and was fighting tooth and nail when Jimmy tried to strap him to the table. He bit Jimmy hard enough to draw blood, then kneed the reverend himself in the balls. Eventually, they had to call in reinforcements. After twenty minutes, they got him strapped to the table.

  The reverend began to pray. Then he started in on Diggs.

  “Daniel, you need to learn that your actions have consequences. Your brother was taken from this life because of your careless disregard. His blood was spilled; and yet, you live. That rebellion you embrace so tight is Satan, havin’ his way with your soul, son. Your brother died because you was too weak to turn your back on temptation. You need to beg for the Lord’s forgiveness or you’ll never be free of the devil. Are you sorry, son?”

  A chorus of “Amen”s rose up from the audience. I clenched my hands so hard I left bleeding crescents in my palms.

  “I’m sorry my brother’s dead. But that doesn’t have anything to do with the devil, and it sure as hell doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Diggs said. I smiled. Stubborn little bastard.

  The preacher kept at him, trying to get him to “turn his back on Satan.” Diggs joked and he fought and then, when it was clear he was too exhausted to do anything else, he went silent.

  Barnel branded his chest.

  Marty Reynolds had screamed bloody murder when Barnel did him. Even Wyatt and Danny had hollered good and loud. Diggs kept his mouth shut and his eyes straight ahead, his hatred so clear it was no wonder the reverend thought Beelzebub was pulling his strings. Afterward, Barnel sent everyone in the audience home, telling them he needed all his concentration on the demon child before him. Once they were gone, something else took hold in Barnel’s eyes: something dark and manic. Something unhinged.

  I turned the tape off and sat there for a second, nauseous. If there was a hell, I hoped Barnel ended up there with someone five times his size burning molten steel into his flesh for all eternity. I got up, got a glass of water, and returned to my cubicle. I turned the tape back on.

  Diggs passed out about an hour in. Brother Jimmy brought him back around by dousing him with water. Then, he put a hood over his head, and doused him ag
ain.

  I fast forwarded more of the same.

  It went on like that for almost three hours.

  Barnel never broke him. He never got him to renounce the devil; never got him to beg for forgiveness. By the time it was over, the reverend was sweating bullets and Diggs—twelve years old, maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet—was slipping in and out of consciousness, but he wouldn’t give an inch. Finally, there was some kind of disturbance behind the camera, and it sounded like someone burst in. A minute later, a big man with dark hair and broad shoulders bulled his way past Brother Jimmy and tore the straps off Diggs’ arms and legs. George Durham.

  “Get away from him, you damn fool,” George said, his voice raw with fury. Wyatt was on his heels. He started to pick Diggs up out of the chair, but Diggs pushed him away and got up on his own.

  “Give me my fucking clothes,” mini Diggs said hoarsely to Barnel.

  “He needs to be cleansed,” Barnel said to Wyatt.

  “Save the party line, Jesup,” George said. “My wife might buy it, but I don’t hold no stock in a man who strips boys down and tortures ’em in the name of God. Now, give the boy his damn clothes and let’s be done with this.”

  Barnel grabbed George by the elbow and pulled him aside. I got the feeling George Durham wasn’t the kind of man accustomed to being manhandled: he jerked his arm away and wheeled on Barnel. The fear on the preacher’s face was obvious. He stepped back enough to give George some room and lowered his voice until it was inaudible on the tape. I fiddled with the audio levels, trying to get some sense of what they were talking about.

  I could only make out one thing through the entire whispered conversation, but it spoke volumes. Barnel said a name, and George’s face went pale. I knew that name well:

  Billy Thomas.

  They fought a little longer before it seemed that the two men came to a stalemate. Finally, Barnel gave the nod and Jimmy brought Diggs his clothes. He was so weak he could barely stand, but he pulled on his pants and a Van Halen t-shirt, shot Barnel one more killing glare, and limped out alongside George and Wyatt Durham.