“Yep. That was him.” There was no hesitation from the other end. “They in some sort of trouble?”
“We just want to ask them some questions, ma’am,” he said politely without giving away what was going on. The last thing he wanted was a rumor going around Dahlonega that there were fugitives on the loose. If that news spread too quickly, they might never find Wyatt.
“Did you happen to catch any names of the people in this group?” He was merely looking for absolute confirmation at this point.
“Yeah. They were calling the older one Mac. I think the younger guy’s name was Sean.” She thought for a moment. “Didn’t catch the girl’s name.”
“Thank you, ma’am, for the information. You’ve been a big help.”
He hung up the phone in the middle of her saying, “You’re welcome.”
Sliding the phone back into his pocket, he said, “We’re going to a place called Red Clay.”
“What’s that?” Will was lost as to what had just transpired.
“We got a witness up in Dahlonega that says Wyatt and McElroy are headed there. I don’t know where it is, but apparently it used to be the site of the old capital of the Cherokee Nation.”
“How far is it?” Will asked, again opening his door.
“Don’t know. But we’re about to find out.”
Trent hopped into the Charger and searched for Red Clay on the car’s navigational system. A minute later, he said, “We can be there in an hour.”
The car tore out of the parking lot, spinning bullet casings in its wake.
45
Blue Ridge Mountains
“Very good. You may hang up the phone now.”
Marla Tinsley stood behind her desk, staring at the two strangers, a man and a woman.The librarian hung up the receiver carefully. “What is this all about?” she asked, terrified. “We don’t have any money in here. What is it you want?”
“Nothing.” The brunette’s cold reply was punctuated by a puff of smoke from the barrel of a silencer.
Fear turned to shock on Tinsley’s face as two more quiet clicks sent bullets ripping into her chest. Her legs buckled beneath her, and she collapsed to the ground.
The woman with the gun stepped quickly around behind the counter and stood over the victim. Tinsley’s shirt had quickly become soaked in red as flowers of blood bloomed from the black holes. A thin matching line streaked from her lips.
With troubling ease, the woman in black raised her weapon once more and fired a final shot into the librarian’s head. Then she turned to the man who’d accompanied her. “Call the Prophet. Give him the update.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” He had started to retrieve his cell phone from his jacket when he stopped and turned back to her. “Should I tell him about this one?” A gloved finger pointed toward the body.
She gave him a look that he understood meant “No.” “Just tell him we are still observing. Nothing else.”
He nodded and pressed the talk button.
Stepping across the body, she made her way toward the front window of the library. Outside the glass, the little town only presented a few wayward pedestrians, none of them seeming aware of what was transpiring within.
She heard her assistant finishing up a short conversation with their boss. He would certainly not be pleased to know that they had killed the librarian, which was why he didn’t need to know about it. She was an innocent stranger, but she was also a loose end. And loose ends were never a good thing.
Her assistant walked up and stood next to her, putting the phone back in his jacket pocket.
She continued looking out the large window. “What did he say?” she asked even though she knew the answer.
“Just to continue on observing.” He glanced over at her, not sure what she was thinking.
“We know where they are going from here. Let’s just try to make sure there are fewer contacts with random people between here and the goal. I’d prefer not to leave a blood trail wherever we go.” She gave a quick glance over her shoulder toward the area where the body lay.
He nodded in agreement.
“Okay,” she said after another moment. “Let’s go. We don’t want them to get too far ahead of us.
The two stepped across the threshold and onto the sidewalk outside. A bright sun beat down on their black outfits, warming their bodies against the chilly autumn air.
No one around even noticed as they slipped into their black sedan and drove off.
46
Southeastern Tennessee
Sean and Allyson stood waiting at the information desk in the welcome center of Red Clay State Park. Since they’d arrived, no park worker had been seen. Joe had lingered in the entryway, checking text messages, more than likely, from an angry Mrs. McElroy.
Time was of the utmost value, and the absence of someone who could provide useful information would certainly be a hindrance.
Allyson breached the silence. “Should we just take a look around? We’ve been standing here for five minutes.” Her patience was obviously running thin.
“Sounds like a plan,” Sean concurred. “Hey, Joe, let’s see what we can find.”
McElroy nodded and flipped his phone closed, sliding it into a front pants pocket.
Sean pointed to a pair of large double doors close to them at an opposing wall. A blue sign marked Exhibit hung above the museum entrance. “Let’s try in there first.”
Upon entering the display room, they noticed an acrid odor that filled the room. It was distinctly different than what a museum normally smelled like.
“Something isn’t right here.” Instinctively, Sean reached for his weapon. He was thankful that Joe kept a secret stash of ammunition in the tool box of the pickup truck.
Cautiously, he held the weapon at his side as he crept past the display boxes and pictures. At the corner of the false wall that divided the two rooms of the exhibit, he stopped and signaled the others to do the same.
Joe and Allyson had detected the smell, too, but they weren’t sure what was going on, so they obeyed, halting short of where Sean stood.
Sean warily peered around the edge of the wall down the other corridor of the small museum. That’s when he saw it.
The body of the park’s keeper lay motionless on its side in the corner of the room near the exit. Thick puddles of blood spread out underneath his form, the liquid seeping slowly into the thin carpet.
After seeing the man on the floor, Sean rushed over to the scene with Allyson and Joe confusedly following behind. As they rounded the wall, the two beheld what had caused Wyatt’s change of demeanor.
“Looks like they’re still a step ahead of us,” Joe commented grimly as he arrived at the exit.
“Yeah,” Sean nodded with a sigh. He reached down and checked for the man’s pulse on the darkly tanned neck, but felt nothing. “He’s gone.”
Allyson had seen bodies before. It was something you had to be able to cope with if you were going to work for the agency. Still, she had never truly grown comfortable with it. “Why would they do this?” she wondered aloud.
Both men shook their heads. “Either this Jurgenson felt like the ranger knew too much, or the guy tried something.” Sean squatted down to one knee, examining the multiple gunshot wounds. “Or maybe he could ID them, and that made him another loose end that had to be tied. At any rate, the police haven’t been here yet.”
“Which means we better get the heck out of dodge,” Joe finished.
“Right.” Sean began to stand when he noticed one of the ranger’s hands clutching something. A cell phone. Cautiously, he reached down and pried the device from the dead man’s fingers, afraid that the police or perhaps a park visitor would burst through the door at any moment.
Then something else caught his attention. In the corner of the room was a small display pedestal with a glass case surrounding a vase. Taking a quick step over to the pottery, he examined it with a look of distant recognition.
Joe, too, became curious wit
h the artifact. “You know what that looks like?”
“It seems like I have seen it somewhere before, but I can’t place it.”
“Looks like Vessel Number One to me.”
“Weeden Island stuff?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t realize they had anything like that in this museum.” Joe frowned while examining the piece.
“There’s no information about where it came from or who found it either.”
“Guys,” Allyson cut in, “I don’t mean to interrupt, but there is a dead boy in the room, so if you don’t mind hurrying up your discussion a little...”
Ignoring her for a second, Sean went on, “I wonder if this vase is the next clue.”
“Would make sense,” Joe agreed. “It’s the only thing in the room that doesn’t fit with any of the other artifacts. Sure is curious. I’ll say that.”
Even after a few closer looks, though, Sean was unsure what clue the vase could hold. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a lot of time to analyze the artifact. “I wish there was some kind of information about this thing.”
Sean looked at Joe and shook his head, turning his attention back to the phone. They wondered if the dead man had called for help before his demise. Surely not. If such a call had been placed, the authorities would already be on the scene.
He pressed a button that illuminated the small screen. Instead of pulling up a menu, though, what appeared to be an unsent text message flashed onto the display. An odd message, Sean thought. The message read, Beacon.
Joe came closer to see what had grabbed his friend’s attention. “Beacon?” he wondered out loud. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Allyson was baffled. “Why would the ranger leave a message like that on his phone if he was dying? Seems like he would have called 911.”
“Not sure, but we can’t stick around here to figure it out,” he answered with growing concern then motioned toward the door and placed the phone back in the curled hand of the park ranger.
The three made their way out of the exhibit room and into the main lobby, heading to the front entrance. Sean reached the inner door to the building first and started to open it when he froze in his tracks. Outside, in the parking lot, two county police cars had pulled into a few empty spaces thirty or so feet away from their own vehicle.
“What?” Allyson asked.
“Police are here,” he responded pseudo-calmly.
“But how did they…?” Joe started to ask, but Sean cut him off by motioning for the group to move back into the building. Fortunately, the glass doors to the Information Center were tinted, so seeing people inside from the parking lot was nearly impossible. Sean looked from right to left, trying to find an alternate exit. There was a set of stairs to the right of the information desk, an option he didn’t like because it immediately cornered them in whatever was on the second floor.
To the left was a door underneath the word Theater. Thinking that most theaters had exits, Sean quickly said, “In there.”
The door to the movie room closed behind them a split second before the two police reached the top of the porch outside.
It hardly seemed like much of a theater. There were four rows of auditorium style seats with a medium-sized screen on the wall in front. Sean stood near the doors for a moment, listening closely. When he heard the inner of the two front doors to the building open, he quietly ushered the other two toward the front row. As he’d suspected, there was an exit near the front of the room.
Moving quickly, the three companions made their way beyond the seats over to the single door with the red Exit letters hanging over top of it. Upon reaching the door, Sean hesitated a moment. Some doors had automatic alarms on them so that in case of an emergency, a warning would sound throughout the rest of the building. As his hand pressed down on the handle, he hoped that this wasn’t one of those.
The device clicked and opened easily into the early afternoon daylight. No alarm sounded as they slipped out of the building undetected and back around the front of the building to the truck.
47
Southeastern Tennessee
Finding the Beacon Tabernacle proved to be easy enough thanks to the Hummer’s navigational system. Fifteen minutes after leaving the state park, Big Guard whipped the SUV into the parking lot of the church. There must have been a thousand words to describe what the men in the car were thinking as they stared at the monstrous building. But silent awe was all that was projected.
The Beacon Tabernacle was situated in a valley of rolling hills right on the crest of a slight rise. From the parking area, the view of the surrounding mountains and hillsides was serenely beautiful. Patches of orange, red, and yellow forest dotted the landscape, the trees’ leaves on fire for the season. In between the dense cropping of woods, a few small farms dotted the land.
Tommy looked around at the scenery. “They sure picked a nice spot,” he whispered to himself. No words had been spoken since they had left the museum. He was still in disbelief at the brutal manner in which Ulrich had killed the innocent park worker.
Still, something about the Indian seemed as if he had been prepared, almost looking forward to the whole thing, like it was part of a bigger plan.
Ulrich and the two guards exited the SUV and also took a brief glance around. Their reason for looking was more to make sure no one had followed rather than to appreciate the stunning visuals.
A solitary gray pickup truck sat quietly outside the entrance. He assumed the vehicle belonged to the church’s sexton. Most churches didn’t require a person to work during the week, due mostly to the small number of people using it. This building, though, boasted more than three thousand patrons. Despite its large seating capacity, the church was forced to offer three services during the mornings just to accommodate everyone.
The four men cautiously approached the building. Unlike many churches in the South and Northeast that were essentially boxes that angled up to a point in the roof with a steeple at the front, the Beacon Tabernacle was most certainly a unique piece of architecture. Not cathedral-like either, its roof gradually rose to one side of the building and then dropped off dramatically. And there was no steeple, only three steel beams of varying heights precariously placed off to the side of the entrance on a separate patch of landscaping.
Another interesting point of note was the lack of crosses. Most Christian churches he’d seen had several crucifixes decorating windows, doorways, pretty much everything. It seemed odd that there were none at this location. In fact, the building seemed to be missing many stereotypical decorative items of Christianity. Two rows of slender stained glass windows decorated the pale brick walls of the exterior. But even though the sheer size of the place was impressive, the design itself seemed somewhat simple, almost made to look plain.
The shorter guard reached the large wooden doors of the church first and grabbed the brass handle. Apparently, the door weighed more than he expected, and the jerking motion pulled him off balance for a second. Slightly embarrassed, he held the door for the other three to walk in first.
Upon entering, the four men found themselves in something that completely offset the outside of the building. Just past the second set of large doors, the ceiling dramatically vaulted up into a five-story-high angled glass roof that extended the length of the room. On the other end of the vast atrium, a tiled staircase extended upward in front of elevator doors.
Even the usually stoic guards seemed impressed. The dumbfounded looks on their faces spoke to the fact that they had never seen anything quite like it. The church’s lobby wasn’t more amazing than the Sistine Chapel or any of the other great cathedrals of the world, but the striking beauty of the inside, when compared to the ordinary exterior of the building, truly was an amazing contrast.
As they stepped farther into the giant room, they saw an older man with a white head of hair at the other end of the mezzanine behind a welcome desk. He must have heard them enter because he was in the process of folding up his newspaper.
Ulrich’s patience with allowing Tommy to ask the questions had seemed to wear thin, and he spoke directly to the church worker. “We are from out of town and heard of your church from our friend here. Would it be possible for us to look around?”
It was unbelievable. Was this the same man who had just gunned down an innocent park ranger not half an hour ago? Now his demeanor had done a complete 180. He spoke smoothly and politely to the old man and did not appear to have any desire to hurt him at all, like a snake waiting quietly in the grass.
“Certainly,” the sexton replied. “Feel free to take a look around. The rooms and offices across the way there are closed for the day.” His skin-and-bone hand extended toward the place about which he was speaking. “But you can go up the elevator to see the balcony, and you may take a look around in the main floor of the sanctuary as well.” Thin lips pursed into a welcoming smile.
“Thank you,” was all that Ulrich offered.
Five sets of stairs led into the main sanctuary. Above, a small chapel was situated on the second floor, the outside wall of which was covered by a spectacular painting of multiple scenes from Jesus’s ministry. The pictorial history climaxed emotionally at the top with a depiction of the second coming. The canvas alone was at least fifteen feet in length and another eight feet wide.
Hurriedly, the four men moved toward the first set of stairs going into the inner lobby of the church. Once inside, several sets of windows allowed the faithful to see into the colossal main worship hall, probably to help the church members decide on a place to sit before actually walking through one of the four sets of wooden doors.
At the very front of the great auditorium, behind the pulpit, was one of the most impressive sights that Tommy had ever seen. The group slightly slowed their pace and passed through one of the doors on the left. Almost reverently, the group eased down the aisle toward a gigantic pipe organ that reached from the floor of the elevated stage to nearly three stories up to the wooden plank ceiling.
The Secret of the Stones Page 23
