by Kyle Mills
“I hear it’s pretty expensive to be a member of the church,” Beamon interjected.
A look of mild suspicion crossed her face and then was gone. “Not particularly. Obviously, with all the services we like to provide and our commitment to charities, we do ask for some support from our members.”
“Does Albert Kneiss ever appear in public?”
The look of suspicion stayed a little longer this time. “Are you a reporter?”
Beamon was a little surprised by the abruptness of the question, but then remembered Chet Michaels’s difficulty in dredging up press articles on the church.
“A reporter? No. No, I’m not.”
There was a long pause and Beamon began to wonder if the interview was over.
“Albert meditates,” she said finally. “As I’m sure you’ve heard, his time with us is nearly over.”
Beamon stood and pulled another cigarette from his pocket. “I really appreciate your time, Cynthia. I learned a lot.” He pointed to a stack of Kneissian Bibles by her chair. “I’d love to have one of those if you can spare it.”
She handed him one, somewhat reluctantly. “I hope it touches you as much as it did me.”
Beamon flipped through the book and smiled. “I have no doubt that it will.”
26
BEAMON COASTED INTO HIS SPACE, MANAGING for once to avoid sliding into the trees in front of it. He left the car running as he lit a cigarette and pulled his new notepad off the windshield. Turning on the interior light, he began flipping through the pages.
Reluctant to dismiss Hans Volker’s views on the church, Beamon had begun to watch for cars that could be tailing him. Every time he saw one that might be popping up behind him more often than probability dictated, he jotted down the color, make, model, license number, time, and approximate location. Then, every night when he arrived home, he’d check to see if there were any matches.
So far there had been nothing exciting—other than the fact that he’d almost run over two pedestrians and a border collie while trying to juggle a cigarette, a cup of coffee, and the pad of paper.
Beamon ran his finger down the list of four cars he’d entered that day, memorizing their make and model, then shuffled back through the prior pages. He stopped at an entry on a red Taurus and flipped back to that day’s record.
The license numbers matched, but that didn’t mean anything. Could be just a neighbor who left for work at the same time. He compared the time of day. Nine A.M. and 3:45 P.M. Location: One between his home and the office, the other nowhere near either.
Beamon leaned back and blew a smoke ring at his rearview mirror. It could be a coincidence, of course, but that seemed unlikely. The real question was whether or not it was the church and if it was, whether it had anything to do with Jennifer Davis. If Hans Volker was right and the Kneissians were generally paranoid about the government’s enforcement machine, it seemed likely that they would keep an eye on the head of the FBI’s Flagstaff office on principle alone.
Beamon kicked his feet up onto one arm of his sofa and worked his head into the soft pillow covering the other.
The Kneissian Bible that the church had been kind enough to provide him appeared to be separated into four books—Nature, Old Testament, Jesus, and The Future. Each book had at least twenty subheadings.
Beamon flipped to the last page. Number 1,212. Probably better just to skim.
It took him about an hour to figure out the significance of each book. Nature took the place of Genesis, describing the creation of the universe, as well as the evolution of man and the “lesser species,” from a significantly more scientific standpoint than the original Bible. In the universe according to Kneiss, God breathed life into the primordial soup that existed on Earth—as well as on an undisclosed number of other planets in the universe—and then waited to see what happened.
Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. He occasionally saw fit to muck around with the evolutionary process, creating the more intricate structures of life such as wings and the complex organs that created a spider’s web, among other things that had baffled anthropologists since Darwin.
Of course, he had taken a special interest in humanity, sending the first Messenger many years ago to stack the deck for homo sapiens against the protohumans who had turned out not to be the sharpest knives in His drawer.
The Old Testament section tended to debunk sections of the original Bible more than anything else. It provided insight into the characters of the original Old Testament, making them much more human and therefore much more believable. David became a murderous and somewhat vain man necessary to God’s plan. The black-and-white treatment of the Romans melted to a gunmetal gray, and God’s motivations became clearer and more ambiguous at the same time.
The Jesus section seemed to serve much the same function as the Old Testament chapters. It covered many of His most pivotal moments on earth, told from His point of view. The squalor and superstition that ruled the lives of the people of that time was rendered so artfully that Beamon could almost feel Jesus’s frustration as he tried to impart the mind of God to a population that understood nothing and feared everything.
The section entitled The Future replaced Revelation, and was the book most starkly different from its predecessor. It stated that the end of humanity was not yet etched in stone. God’s hope for mankind was that it would evolve to a state of complete enlightenment. That was to be the criteria on which it would be judged. Would humanity be able to leave behind superstition, fear, and hate? To develop fully those things that set it apart from the other species that shared the earth?
Beamon yawned and laid the book down on his chest. Four-thirty in the morning. He looked over at the coffee table and counted the empty beer bottles on it. Eight. Three more than his daily allowance.
He picked up Kneiss’s Bible again and stared at the black cover.
As a work of literature, it was truly amazing. The prose style was a seemingly impossible mix of passion and reason, formality and accessibility. It stripped the wings off the angels and the horns and teeth from the devil, offering humanity a glimpse of its potential and a clear path to achieving that potential. It provided answers to a world trying so desperately to find meaning and clinging to gods that had stood still while their flocks had moved on.
27
“IT’S A MIRACLE!”
Beamon surveyed his office with a sense of satisfaction. True, the cables were still hanging from the ceiling and there was still that unavoidable layer of white dust over everything, but by God, the concrete floor had disappeared beneath a layer of utilitarian tan carpet.
His secretary walked up next to him and leaned against the doorjamb as though she hadn’t noticed until he pointed it out. “A miracle, huh? From what I hear, you had a conversation with the general contractor about his continued ability to—how did he put it—travel America’s highways and byways? I understand his people were in here all night.”
“Morning, Mark.”
Beamon didn’t look out from behind his paper. “Have a seat, Chet. Your shoes aren’t dirty, are they?”
“Nope. Nice carpet.”
“Clearly a floor covering befitting a man of my stature,” Beamon said, finishing the article he was reading and tossing the paper on the desk.
Michaels chuckled quietly. “Clearly.”
“What did you think of your friend’s theory, Chet?”
Michaels’s expression turned serious. “At first, I was really embarrassed to have dragged you out there. But then I couldn’t sleep that night, you know? The angle of the bullet, the scratches on his hand. I don’t know, Susan’s really smart.”
“Attractive, too,” Beamon said. “How’d you ever let her get away?”
“Lesbian.”
“No.”
“Yup.”
“Well, a good woman’s hard to find. Sometimes you just have to overlook their little imperfections.” Beamon looked at the blue folders his young protégé never seeme
d to be without. “So what have you got for me?”
“Wait a minute, Mark. You can’t leave me hanging like that. What do you think of Susan’s theory?”
“We’ll get to that, but first things first,” Beamon answered, shaking his finger again toward the folders.
Michaels reluctantly tossed one of them onto Beamon’s desk. “That’s a bunch of articles on the church that have come in from the publishers. Some are pretty old—actually most are. Objective media coverage seems to be less every year.”
“I’ll read’m tonight. I’ve got a meeting starting in an hour that’s going to take all day. Is there anything in here that I need to know right now?”
“Not really. There’s some stuff criticizing the church’s business tactics and the fact that they use nuisance suits to beat down their detractors. Some stuff on how it’s really expensive to belong … oh, and there’s a really interesting Psychology Today article about the pressure the church puts on its people to recruit new members and the toll it takes on them emotionally. That one was pretty cool. Now, what about Susan’s theory?”
“We’re going to work on that in a few minutes,” Beamon said, pointing to the remaining folder lying in the young agent’s lap. “What’s that one?”
“Information I put together on your neighbor and Sara Renslier.”
Beamon waved him on. “Give me the Reader’s Digest version.”
“Robert T. Andrews. Thirty-five years old, originally from Louisiana—Baton Rouge. Career military: 82nd Airborne. Honorably discharged a sergeant June 1995. As near as I can tell, he’s been unemployed since then. I tried to check out his prior address—it’s a property up in the mountains. Couldn’t get there, though—the road leading to it was snowed in.” He looked up at Beamon. “You think this guy’s watching you?”
Beamon shrugged. “Probably not. Just a feeling.”
“I can dig deeper.”
Beamon shook his head. If the church was watching him, best not to jump up and down with his pants around his ankles. “Do me this, though. See if you can quietly find out if anyone else is living at his prior address and if so, get me some general information on them, too. Now what about Renslier?”
“Sara Renslier is fifty-one. Lists the church as her employer and Kneiss’s compound as her permanent residence. It looks like she was an accountant for a few years after school, then went to work for the church. No criminal record; nothing specific about what she does for the church. Time to talk about the suicide theory yet?”
Beamon stood up from behind his desk. “It’s time. Go get me Theresa and James,” he said, naming the two agents in his office, besides Chet, who seemed the most flexible and imaginative. “And let’s not mention the church angle, okay?”
Michaels looked confused, but complied. Beamon followed him to the door. “Hey, D., you were a drama major, weren’t you?”
“I do have a public administration minor,” she said a little defensively.
“Don’t need an administrator. Need an actress. Are you any good?”
She looked at him suspiciously, obviously waiting for the punch line. When none came, she said, “There are worse.”
“Shut the door behind you, Chet,” Beamon said as Michaels walked in with the two agents Beamon had sent him for.
“Okay, here’s what’s happening. Chet and I have a theory about the Davis case and we need some help working it out. Now, what I’m going to tell you doesn’t leave this room. I mean that. If I hear anything that leads me to believe it has, I will make it my life’s work to track down the leak and see him or her thrown out of the Bureau. Anybody have a problem with that?”
Beamon surveyed the young agents’ faces and the face of his secretary as they all mumbled their assent.
“Okay then. We have physical evidence that leads us to believe that Mr. Davis may have shot his wife and then committed suicide.”
With the exception of Michaels, the expressions worn by the people in the room turned to shock. There was some low murmuring, but no one spoke up clearly. Probably still intimidated by his little speech.
“Now, my problem is that I can’t figure out a motivation for Mr. Davis that fits the rest of the facts. And that’s where you all come in.”
Beamon grabbed some note cards from his desk drawer and began writing on them. “D., you’re Patricia Davis.” He handed her a nametag that she taped to her chest.
“Theresa—you’re Jennifer, I’m Eric Davis. And Chet and James—you guys are our hypothetical perpetrators.” He handed them nametags reading “Thing 1” and “Thing 2,” then leaned back to examine his cast. Something was missing. He handed Michaels a stapler and James a ruler. “Those are your guns.”
Something was still wrong. He looked at Theresa’s neatly trimmed hair and conservative blue business suit, then down at his desk. He unwound a paper clip and broke a third of it off. Fashioning the remaining wire into a loop, he held it out to her. “Put this on your nose.”
She looked doubtful.
“Jennifer has a nose ring,” he said impatiently. “Come on, let’s get with the program.”
She reluctantly stuck it to her nose, then looked down at it cross-eyed.
“That’s what I was looking for,” Beamon said. “Okay. Chet, would you like to give us our first scenario?”
“Wait a minute, Mark,” D. broke in. “You know all there is to know about Mr. Davis, and Jennifer’s life story has been plastered across the newspapers since she disappeared. But I don’t know anything about my character.”
Beamon pointed at D. but looked at the others. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. A little enthusiasm.”
He stood and took a position with his back against the wall, inviting D. to do the same. “Patricia Davis put her husband through college and supported him in his various business ventures, but hasn’t worked since adopting Jennifer thirteen years ago. She’s active in the PTA, an apparently devoted mother—though Jennifer considers her kind of, uh, square? She’s also involved in numerous charities and belongs to a bridge club. Jennifer is her only child. Never had one of her own.”
D. held up her hand. “That should do it.”
“Okay, then. Chet, I believe you were about to convince me to kill my wife and commit suicide.”
Michaels reached out, grabbed Theresa, and held the stapler to her head. “Okay, Mr. Davis. Shoot your wife and kill yourself or your daughter gets it.”
Silence.
“Uh, I don’t have a gun, son,” Beamon said.
Chet turned to James. “Give him your gun.”
James looked doubtful. “No way. There’s no telling what a guy would do in this situation if he were armed. I’ll shoot him for you if you want, though.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Michaels said, releasing his grip on Theresa.
“That’s okay. That’s what we’re here for. To eliminate possibilities,” Beamon said. “How about this. Jennifer never made it home. Her dad went nuts and killed her on the way.”
Beamon took Michaels’s stapler and aimed it at Jennifer. He was about to pull the “trigger” when his secretary grabbed him from behind and started choking him.
As he peeled her arm from his throat, Theresa ran to the door. Beamon corrected his scenario. “D.’s right on that one, there was evidence of a struggle.” He grabbed her and “shot” Jennifer. D. played the distraught mother beautifully, throwing herself to her knees next to her fallen daughter—obviously having the time of her life.
“Okay, okay,” Beamon said. “You’re right. Super-unlikely that he could have killed Jennifer and then controlled the mother long enough to get her home. Hell, why bring Mom back at all?”
Theresa lifted her head from the carpet. “What if she was in on it and then you—Mr. Davis—started feeling really guilty when you got home?”
Beamon was skeptical. “What do you think, D.? Do you feel like you were in on it?”
She shook her head.
“Me neither. No indication of
this type of tendency at all in either of them. And then there’s the Big Question—where the hell’s the gun?”
They all grumbled as they wrestled with the problem.
“Okay,” Beamon said, ignoring the crowd forming on the other side of the window to his office. “Let’s try the obvious one on for size. Dad goes nuts, Jennifer gets away.”
He turned to D. “Patricia, you’ve left the cap off the toothpaste one too many times. Bang.”
D. fell to the floor and Theresa ran to the edge of the room. Beamon pointed the deadly stapler at himself, “bang,” and fell to the floor.
His eyes were closed, but he could hear Theresa walking toward him. “I’m sorry, Mark, but I can’t think of any reason in this world why I’d take that gun.”
Beamon sat up. “Shit. Me neither. Eliminate that one.”
“What if Jennifer was involved?”
Beamon shrugged. “Takes us back to the first scenario. Even if she had an accomplice holding a gun to her head and she was pleading with her father to kill her mom and shoot himself, I don’t think he’d have done it. Besides, what would be the point of taking the gun and making it look like murder after going through all that trouble? And why hasn’t she reappeared to collect her inheritance? And where the hell is … Shit, I don’t know … “
“What if they walked in on a robbery?” Chet began. “And the robbers take Jennifer and tell the parents that they’re going to rape and kill her. That she’ll be dead in a half-hour. Dad gets despondent—kills himself and his wife.”
Beamon shook his head. “No way. He’d at least call the cops. Try to save his daughter in the next half-hour. And once again, where’s the gun?”
“What if Jennifer was killed early on?”
“What, with the robbery scenario? Why the hell would they take the body? Necrophilia? I think we’re reaching.”
Beamon stood and helped his secretary to her feet. “Okay, guys, thanks. You’ve helped a lot.”
They filed out through the door, discussing further possibilities in quiet whispers. Michaels closed the door behind D. as Beamon sat down at his desk and took a sip of cold coffee from his mug. “What are we going to do about this one, Chet?”
