by Kyle Mills
39
MAKING IT LOOK LIKE AN ACCIDENT when he dropped the church’s tails was getting more and more complicated. The blue Taurus had been a little more tenacious today, forcing Beamon into a combination car wash/playacted road rage scenario that probably looked pretty thin.
He slowed a bit as he passed Ernestine Waverly’s house, noting the unfamiliar car parked in the driveway, and then eased to a stop against the curb about a block away.
The muffled shouting from inside her house was audible by the time Beamon made it halfway up the walk. He slid his hand around the handle of his revolver and put his ear against the door.
“Don’t do it, for Christ’s sake! Put that pizza down!”
“You have no right to judge me! That’s for God to do.”
“A few more slices and He’s going to be the only one that’s going to be able to haul your ass out of that chair!”
Beamon peeled his ear off the door and opened it. The car in the driveway and the voice inside belonged to Jack Goldman. He’d apparently arrived early—before Beamon had had a chance to prepare Ernie for his colorful disposition.
“Decided to sleep in? Whole morning’s gone,” Goldman said as Beamon walked into the cluttered room.
Ernie glared at Goldman as he struggled over to a small table and leaned against it, breathing sporadically. She looked like she was trying to stroke him out by sheer force of will as she tore into a piece of cold pizza with spiteful abandon.
“Morning, Ernie,” Beamon said. “Am I in time for breakfast?
“Don’t encourage her, Mark,” Goldman croaked.
“You be quiet,” Ernie shot back through a half- full mouth of pizza.
This was just perfect. He was up against an organization with millions of fanatical followers, nearly unlimited capital, and apparently unparalleled information-gathering capabilities. Even with the FBI behind him, he’d probably lose this one. But he didn’t have the FBI behind him. What he had was a man who had probably bought a Model ? new from the showroom and a morbidly obese shut-in who thought he was some kind of avenging angel.
Ernie shoved the rest of the pizza into her mouth with a final Herculean push and reached over to pull a piece of paper from under her keyboard. She wadded it up and threw it at Beamon. Hard. “That’s what you asked for. I ran the church’s old membership list against every database I could find.”
“Hmmff,” Goldman let out as Beamon unraveled the paper. He ignored the old man and ran a finger down the list of names. It was about what he’d expected. The presidents of two mortgage companies—one of which was probably getting ready to foreclose on his condo—the head of a medium-sized health/life insurance company, the heads of Vericomm and its sister company, Verinet. On the political side, three senators—one of whom chaired Ways and Means—and eleven representatives, not to mention more than a handful of high-level bureaucrats. Interestingly, though, no credit card companies. Of course, any lowly clerk probably had the juice to completely unravel his credit for all time.
“You done screwing around yet?” Goldman said.
“Look, Jack,” Ernie said. “Mark is looking at the information I got for him. Maybe you should be quiet for once.”
Goldman glared back at her and pulled a stack of papers out of a briefcase that looked as old as he was. He caned his way across the room and spread them out on the table next to Beamon. They seemed to consist of wiring schematics and maps, though Beamon could only guess at their significance.
“The church’s compound, where that Kneiss guy lives, is here,” Goldman said, jabbing a gnarled finger at a colorful map. “They’ve got eight phone lines running out to an aboveground pedestal, here.” He flipped to a wiring schematic. “And then into a cross-connect box about a mile away. We can hit ‘em at the box. There are four lines coming into Ernie’s house, so we can terminate the taps here—use cell phone service. Then we can run a redundant site into the apartment I’m staying in. I’ve got three additional lines being installed this afternoon.”
“Where the hell do you get this stuff, Mr. Goldman?” Beamon said, shaking his head. “You just got here yesterday, for God’s sake.”
“You don’t think I have contacts?”
Beamon rolled up the maps and handed them back to Goldman. “Contacts or not. I may not have the support of my organization, but I’m still an FBI agent. No illegal wiretaps. That’s the final word.”
“Jesus Christ, boy! You know what you’re up against here? They aren’t playing by your rules—”
Ernie cut off his tirade before it gained too much momentum. “As much as I hate to say it, Mark, he’s right. God doesn’t follow man’s law. We have to ask ourselves what He wants of us. The Lord gave us the ability to see beyond black and white.”
Beamon leaned his head forward and rubbed his temples. “Ernie, darlin’, you’ve got to give me a break on the religious stuff. I’m just an FBI agent, not Martin Luther.”
Goldman looked smug. “Well, for whatever the reason, I’d say it’s two against one.”
Beamon looked up at him. “Fortunately, my decision is the only one that counts.”
40
JENNIFER DAVIS LAY MOTIONLESS ON THE COLD floor with her heels resting on the bed that had become the focus of her life over the past month. The burning in her stomach had just about subsided, so she lifted her back up off the floor and began a second set of situps.
After forty repetitions, her muscles felt like they’d caught fire, but she just pushed herself harder, trying to burn her anger, loneliness, and fear in the flame spreading across her abdomen. After fifty-five, the fuel for the fire was gone and she struggled to her feet and walked over to the remains of her breakfast lying on a plastic tray by the door.
She took the spoon off the plate and turned it over and over again in her fingers. Always a spoon now. The knife and fork had never reappeared since the day she had been taken to see her grandfather’s body. That pale bitch Sara must think she was going to kill herself and rob her of the pleasure.
Jennifer stuffed the spoon in the waistband of her underpants and lifted the heavy bed away from the wall. Using the end of the utensil, she scraped a small line in the plaster next to a group of similar lines. March 15. She moved the bed back, trying to force herself not to calculate how much time she had left. She was unsuccessful, though, just like she was every morning. Twelve days, her mind told her as she dropped the spoon back onto the tray. The metallic clang seemed to echo through the room before being swallowed up by the silence that had swallowed her up. Two weeks.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said aloud.
She was going to get out of here. She’d done the hardest part, gotten control of her fear and managed to turn her loneliness and the memory of her parents’ death into a fierce sense of self-reliance. She’d figure out a way to get out of here. She had to.
And when she finally did escape, she would have a place to go. Sara wanted her to think she was alone, but she wasn’t. Jamie and his mother would take her in until it was time for her to go to college. With the money her parents must have left her, she could buy them a new house. Mrs. Rodrigues didn’t deserve to be stuck in that horrible trailer park.
The key hitting the lock startled her, as it always did, but she managed to fight the urge to back against the wall, instead standing in the middle of the room and facing the door defiantly.
Sara came in alone, but Jennifer could see the man who always accompanied her as he took a position outside the door. She’d never get past him. She had to think of another way.
“The elders would like to see you again, Jennifer,” Sara said, stopping a few feet away from where she stood. “You’re very important to them now.”
Jennifer struggled to control her rage. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the woman’s throat and couldn’t stop wondering if she could choke the life out of her before Mustache Man made it through the door and dragged her off.
“You tricked them. They don’t know wha
t my grandfather really wanted,” Jennifer said.
Sara made a move toward her but then stopped when Jennifer didn’t shrink away. The woman glanced behind her at the open door, confirming her companion’s presence, and then turned back. “Think, Jennifer. If you do, I think you’ll remember things differently. You’ll understand what you are and what you’ll become.”
“You’re a liar,” Jennifer said. “He gave the church to me. He wanted me to have it.”
Sara smiled. “There’s nothing you can do to stop this, Jennifer, it’s God’s will. Deep down you know that’s true, don’t you? Your parents believed—enough to die for you.”
“It’s not true!” Jennifer said. Sara was just trying to confuse her.
An expression of anger crossed Sara’s face and then disappeared. “I thought you might like to leave this room one more time. But now I see that it’s impossible.” She walked out into the hallway and began pulling the door closed behind her. “Good-bye, Jennifer.”
“No! Wait!” Jennifer heard herself say. But Sara was gone.
She stood alone in the middle of the room for a long time, quivering with rage and frustration. She had to get out. In less than two weeks they were going to kill her. This wasn’t a game—it was real. She fell onto the bed and pulled her knees to her chest, feeling the tears well up in her eyes for the first time in a week.
She stared at the heavy wood door for a long time and thought back over the month she’d been there. There wasn’t any reason for them to let her out again. And even if they did, what could she do? The strength and will she’d managed to piece together over the last few weeks wouldn’t do anything against the Mustache Man.
She was lying to herself. They would never let her escape. In twelve days Sara and the Mustache Man would come through the door for the last time. She’d struggle uselessly as they plunged the syringe into her. And that would be the end.
41
A HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES BETWEEN THEIR offices and he just couldn’t keep that man’s ass out of his chair.
Beamon looked through the window to his office at Jake Layman, who was, once again, flipping though the paperwork he’d found on Beamon’s desk. He didn’t look as angry as he had the last time Beamon had seen him, but he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
“Morning, Jake,” Beamon said, opting to skip the trip to the coffee pot in an effort to get Layman back on the road ASAP. “To what do I owe this visit?”
Layman looked almost happy as he slid a two-page fax across the desk.
It was copied from a newspaper article, Beamon saw when he picked it up. The headline, in bold capital letters, read: MARK BEAMON—FIT FOR DUTY?
“I have a friend at the Chronicle,” Layman explained. “He was courteous enough to send this to me before it hits the paper tomorrow.”
Beamon scanned the article, hoping that the headline was just a teaser and that the rest would get better.
It didn’t. The focus of the piece seemed to be his drinking habits and was heavily slanted toward the negative. It failed to mention his uncanny conviction rate and what a fun guy he was at parties, instead using a collage of unrelated anecdotes spread out over many years to portray him as a pathetic, decaying drunk.
He had to give the author credit, though, the piece was beautifully written and exceptionally well researched. A chronology of undeniable facts taken completely out of context.
Following a brief introduction of the unfortunate theme, the article began with Beamon’s fraternity days at Yale, giving a detailed description of his invention of the Hop Hose.
Beamon almost managed a bitter smile as he remembered piecing the Hose together out of an old cooler and a bilge pump during exams his junior year. It had been a simple yet inspired device. You filled the cooler to the top with beer from a keg, stuck the hose emanating from the front into your mouth, and pushed the doorbell on the side. The bilge pump would fire up, a siren on top would start, and, well, you’d get filled full of beer in about a second and a half. As far as he knew, the original Hop Hose was still enshrined in a specially constructed glass case at his old fraternity house.
The article moved on to outline his inauspicious first meeting with the born-again director of the FBI, which, in hindsight, probably had involved about ten ounces too much bourbon and about a pound too much sarcasm.
The rest was more mundane, but equally damaging. Anonymous, but despicably accurate, stories of late-night party excesses and bloodshot mornings. It concluded with the same tired old crap about the vaunted FBI old-boy network protecting his “secret,” yada, yada, yada.
Beamon threw the fax back onto the desk. “Interesting timing.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
Beamon sat silently, eyes locked on Layman, waiting to hear exactly what his boss was planning to do about this unfortunate little essay. He didn’t have to wait long.
“I’ve tried to protect you, Mark. But I just can’t anymore.”
Beamon would have liked to know exactly how Layman had tried to protect him, but decided this probably wasn’t the time to ask.
“What they don’t have here, thank God,” Layman said, stabbing a finger at the fax, “is the report that you’d been drinking when you examined the scene of the Jennifer Davis kidnapping, and the fact that you were drunk when your primary suspect was somehow killed.”
Beamon couldn’t seem to work up anything that felt even remotely like anger. He just felt tired. He should have seen this coming, and now he was getting exactly what he deserved for not staying awake. “Come on, Jake. I had a few beers while we were playing golf—you were there, for God’s sake.”
Layman opened his arms and shrugged. “I wasn’t watching. I have no idea how much you drank that day. But I do have a report from two cops who were at the scene that you smelled like a brewery when you arrived.”
Beamon seriously doubted that, since, as he recalled, he had about six pieces of gum in his mouth by the time he got out of the car. “I don’t suppose it matters that David Passal fell down a ladder while I was twenty miles away, trying to menti some fences with the local cops …” He let his voice trail off. Of course it didn’t matter. He could see from his boss’s expression that he was wasting his breath. No point in making this any more fun for Layman than it had to be. “Okay, Jake. Cut to the chase. What’s this to me?”
“I spoke at length with the director this morning.”
Beamon closed his eyes and took a deep breath. That couldn’t be good.
“We went over the issues I just spoke about, and your recent lapses in judgment …”
“Lapses in judgment?” Beamon said, opening his eyes.
“Your investigation of the Church of the Evolution. The fact that you’ve become obsessed with the Kneissians and that you’ve ignored my repeated attempts to put you back on track.”
“Come on, Jake, you weren’t even keeping up with the facts of the case. Who are you to question my investigative judgment?”
Layman just smiled calmly. “I’m your boss, Mark. Maybe if you could remember that, you wouldn’t be in the position you’re in today.”
Beamon grabbed the fax and held it up. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that this is pretty typical for the church? They probably own the fucking Flagstaff Chronicle.”
“Typical? Are you talking about the organization that’s built hospitals and schools all over Arizona, and feeds the homeless during the holidays? The organization that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to charity every year? This is what I’m talking about, Mark. You’ve become paranoid. And we think it’s from the drinking.”
He leaned back in Beamon’s chair and began picking at one of his nails. “You’re a competent agent, Mark, and we don’t want to lose you. Whatever help you need, you’re going to get. You might even be able to come back from this if you really focus on getting your problems ironed out.”
Beamon looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath, fighting to ke
ep some kind of emotional distance between himself and what was happening.
“You’re being put on immediate paid leave until we can get this straightened out.”
Portraying as much outward calm as he could, Beamon reached into his pocket and pulled out his FBI credentials. To Layman’s credit, he was almost successful in suppressing his smile when Beamon handed them over.
“We’ve scheduled a physical for you on March twenty-fifth. You’re to report to headquarters on that date. Any questions?”
Beamon managed to push his suspension and the irreparable damage that was going to be done to his reputation tomorrow to an unused corner of his mind. Sara Renslier was going to find that he wasn’t as easily handled as some others.
“What long-distance carrier do you use?”
Layman looked at him strangely and shook his head as he walked around the desk to leave. Beamon grabbed his arm. “You asked if I had any questions. That’s my question. What long-distance carrier do you use?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Mark? Are you drunk now?” Layman said, trying to pull free. Beamon squeezed harder, sinking his fingers into the flesh of Layman’s forearm.
“I don’t know,” Layman said finally. “You dial a code. It’s five cents a minute.”
“Mark, have you seen this?” Chet Michaels said, running into the office without his customary nervous pause at the door. “A friend of mine just sent it to me.” He slapped a bad fax copy of the offending article on the desk.
Beamon nodded and continued picking through his drawers, occasionally dropping an item or two into the box at his feet. He hadn’t been there long enough to accumulate much junk. Usually this operation took days.
“It’s the church, isn’t it? What do you want to bet the guy who wrote that article is a member?”
Beamon shrugged.
