by Jude Hardin
But he sounded like him.
Maybe he had gotten some plastic surgery or something to disguise himself. It would have been an extreme thing to do, but the Harvest Angels were an extreme group.
Thinking about them triggered another memory, one that I hoped was false. I pulled my shirt off and, sure enough, there it was. The angel tattoo. Brother John had tried to make me one of them, but why? Why me? Was all this part of some sort of elaborate scheme to exact revenge for the pain I had inflicted on him at Chain of Light?
And why did he bring me to California to record with the band Testimony? That especially didn’t make sense. There had to be more to it.
Someone knocked on the restroom door.
“Mr. Maddox, your escort is here.”
“Be out in a minute,” I said.
I pulled some paper towels out of the dispenser and dried my hands and face and tried to figure out what to do next.
I was three thousand miles from home with no money and no way of proving my identity. I tried to think of what crimes Brother John had committed, but other than abducting me and drugging me and mind-fucking me, I couldn’t think of any. If I went to the police it would be my word against his, and the tattoo on my arm would not work in my favor.
I figured Derek Wahl had been similarly kidnapped and brainwashed and that Brother John and company had been responsible for the Lamb murders, but I had no way to prove any of it. The only witnesses that might still be alive were Virgil Lamb and his grandson Joe, but I didn’t think that was very likely. They were probably at the bottom of a lake or buried somewhere on the mountain.
I looked in the mirror at the tattoo on my left arm. Fine work. Amazing detail. I would do whatever it took to have it removed. If necessary, I would scrape it off myself with a cheese grater.
On the other side of my arm dangled the ports to my PICC line, which reminded me that even though I had my memory back I was still a drug addict.
As an upper-echelon musician, I had known a lot of guys who had done a lot of drugs. There were the guys like me, who stuck to weed and alcohol and the occasional snort of cocaine, and there were the guys who stuck needles in their arms. Smack. Chiba. Horse. Junk. Skag. Mud. Dope. Scat.
It all meant the same thing.
Heroin.
I knew guys, even guys in my own band, who functioned perfectly well on it for years. They would have a fix in the morning like most people have coffee, and they would go about their daily business. They would go to the bank, the post office, the grocery store. They would stop at Huddle House for a plate of sausage and eggs. They would come to rehearsal and smoke cigarettes and marijuana with the rest of us and maybe drink a beer and when we took a break, they would go off by themselves and shoot that shit into their arms.
Everything was hunky-dory until they couldn’t get the drug for one reason or another. Then they became very sick individuals. Their brains needed the drug like a sponge needs water. Their entire existence depended on it. They would do whatever it took to get it. They would kill for it if they had to.
A drummer named Harley Krettak tried to borrow a thousand dollars from me one time. Colt .45 had just come off tour, and we’d gotten word that Dead Ringer, our third album, had gone platinum. I was flush with cash. I could have thrown Harley a grand with no problem. I never would have missed it. He said it was for rent and food, but I knew better. Harley was an addict. You could see it in his eyes, and you could see it on his arms. My thousand dollars wouldn’t have helped him. He would have needed another thousand in a few days.
I said no. It wasn’t about the money. I just didn’t want to contribute to the cause when I knew the cause was an early grave.
Twenty-four hours after I turned him down for the loan, Harley Krettak walked into a convenience store with a sawed-off shotgun and told the clerk to open the safe. The clerk said she didn’t know the combination, so Harley pulled the trigger and blew her face off. A friend in the sheriff’s department let me watch the security video. The hatred in Harley’s eyes made Charles Manson look like an altar boy.
Last I heard, Harley was still on death row in the Florida State Prison in Starke. Last I heard, it’s hard to score dope there, and they don’t let you have a drum set.
I thought about going to the police and having Brother John arrested for drug possession, but I figured that wouldn’t work either. He had inserted a urinary catheter in me and a feeding tube and a PICC line. He was obviously a medical doctor, which meant he probably had a license to dispense narcotics. The drug he had turned me into a junkie with was probably not heroin off the street. It was probably a pharmaceutical analgesic called Dilaudid. I had taken it before in tablet form, but the intravenous version was much quicker and much more potent. It produced euphoric states similar to heroin’s, and it was every bit as addictive.
I decided to go on up to the eighth floor and play along for a while until I could find a way to nail Brother John for something that would put him away for a long time. I put my shirt on and walked back out to the lobby. There was a petite woman in a business suit waiting at the elevator bank with a walkie-talkie.
“Hi, Mr. Maddox,” she said.
“My friends call me Maddog. Or just Dog.”
“OK, Dog. Ready to go up?”
“Absolutely.”
We took the elevator to the eighth floor and she stayed with me until we reached the studio. Bob Watson was waiting at the entrance and he vouched for my identity. The petite woman said good-bye and marched back toward the elevators.
“Forget your wallet this morning?” Bob said.
“Yeah. Actually, I lost it. ID, credit cards, everything.”
“That sucks. What a pain in the ass.”
“You’re not kidding.”
He gestured toward the main room. “Come on back and meet the guys.”
“OK.”
Bob introduced me to Dan Powers, Jack Dixon, and Warren Boxx, Testimony’s lead singer, bass player, and drummer.
“We’re looking for a permanent guitar player,” Dan said. “Think you might be interested?”
“Let’s see how it goes with this record,” I said.
“Cool. Bob and I would like to get you in the big room with Jack and Warren today, see if we can add some live energy to some of these tracks.”
“OK.”
There was a drum set and a bass rig already set up in the main room. I plugged into the Marshall and went through the songs with Jack and Warren. They were good musicians and we made it through all ten songs with no problem. I was on autopilot most of the time, trying to think of a way out of this mess and a way to send Brother John and his brainwashed brethren to prison.
A wall and a window separated the main room from the control room, and through the window we could see Bob and Dan and Roger working at the console. Throughout the session, they issued instructions through our headsets, and when we finished the last song Bob gave us a thumbs-up and told us to break for lunch.
We put our instruments away and walked to the control room. Roger sat at the thirty-six-channel mixing board and let us listen to the recording.
“It’s sounding really good,” Bob said. “What I’d like to do this afternoon is—”
The door opened and Brother John walked in carrying two large bags that said Chico’s Mexican Food.
“Anybody hungry?” he said.
After lunch the guys in Testimony left the studio and Bob worked with me on the lead solos to three of the songs. By four o’clock I was jonesing for another shot. I asked if we could take a break, and then I asked Brother John if I could speak to him in private. He grabbed his doctor bag and led me through a set of mirrored sliding-glass doors and into a storage area behind the control room. I slid the door shut and latched the deadbolt.
“What’s your name?” he said.
I hesitated for a second. I wanted that shot. I wanted it more than almost anything.
But while we were eating lunch something had clicked, someth
ing I might have thought about sooner if half my brain cells hadn’t been saturated with the most powerful narcotic painkiller on the planet. When we met at Blue Water Bay on Fat Tuesday, Donna Wahl told me that the police had found some DNA at the Lambs’ residence that didn’t belong to any of the Lambs or to her brother, Derek. Allison Parker, the great-niece who was trying to sell the Lambs’ house, said the DNA sample came from a bloody fingerprint on a piece of rubber. The police figured the murderer had worn a mask and that the mask had gotten torn in the scuffle, but if my hunch was correct, that’s not what happened.
When I was first kidnapped and taken to the compound, I had started referring to Brother John as Stoneface. I called him that because his face lacked expression. He never smiled, never frowned, just looked pretty much the same all the time.
I didn’t think much about it. Some people are just like that. But while we were eating, I noticed that something wasn’t quite right. The food he’d brought was hot and spicy and the room was kind of warm, and everyone else’s nose had an oily sheen while Brother John’s was bone dry. That’s when I put two and two together.
The guy had a plastic face. Or at least part of it was plastic.
I saw a man on television one time who had lost his nose and upper palate to cancer. He had a prosthesis he could snap on and off like a vacuum cleaner attachment. Damnedest thing I’d ever seen. I figured Brother John had something similar, and that part of it had gotten torn during the struggle at the Lambs’ house. If that was the case, then the police already had all the evidence they would need to convict him of the murders.
Time for me to get the hell out of Dodge.
“What’s your name?” Brother John repeated.
I clocked him in the jaw with an uppercut. His knees buckled and he fell to the floor.
I stood over him with clenched fists.
“Nicholas Colt, motherfucker. My name’s Nicholas Colt.”
I expected Brother John to get up and fight, or maybe even pull a weapon on me. He could have had a gun in his pocket for all I knew. My punch didn’t knock him out, so I expected a fight. But he didn’t get up. He stayed on the floor.
He worked the hinge of his jaw back and forth with his hand, and then looked up at me. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’re too late. The prophesy will be fulfilled.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ll see.”
“I should stomp your fucking skull in right now,” I said. “But I’m going to do the right thing. I’m going to hand you over to the police and hope you rot in prison.”
“Haven’t you done enough to me already?”
“I punched you in the jaw. Big fucking deal.”
“Not that. What you did to me at Chain of Light.”
“So it is you,” I said.
“You probably think this is a disguise, but it’s not. Three years ago at the Chain of Light Ranch, you tied me up in the back of a van and jammed a wooden pencil in my penis until I gave you the information you wanted. Then you knocked me unconscious with the butt of a pistol and left me in the woods. That was around midnight. By the time I woke up the next morning, my left eye and most of my face had been eaten by fire ants. Can you imagine the pain I went through? Can you even imagine?”
“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you then, and you’re lucky I don’t kill you now. Give me your phone.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and tossed it to me. I called the police and identified myself and told them I was holding a murder suspect in a storage room on the eighth floor of the Capitol tower. The dispatcher promised help would be there shortly. She told me to stay on the line until the officers arrived, but I had another call to make. I disconnected and punched in Juliet’s number.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“Nicholas! Oh my God, we were so worried. I thought—”
“It’s OK,” I said. “I’m fine. It’s over, Jules. Everything’s going to be all right now. It’s safe for you and Brittney to come home.”
“Where are you?”
“Los Angeles. Long story.”
“We’ll catch a flight out as soon as we can,” she said. “We have storm warnings here, so it might be a couple of days. Oh my God. I can’t believe this. We’ll have a layover at LAX, so maybe you can meet us there.”
“I need to go to Tennessee,” I said, “but I’ll be in Florida by the time you guys get home.”
“Oh, Nicholas, I’m so excited. Every day I prayed that you were OK.”
“Well, I am. Is Brittney nearby?”
She said that Brittney was out swimming in the ocean. Naturally, Juliet wanted to know about everything that had happened to me. I told her I would fill her in later. I told her I loved her and that I would see her soon.
Ten minutes later, someone banged on the door. I unlatched the deadbolt, and two uniformed officers stepped into the room. One of them was named Peterson, the other Garcia.
“What’s this all about?” Garcia said.
“It’s about murder,” I said. “The piece of shit on the floor here killed at least two people, probably more. He kidnapped me and drugged me and brainwashed me, and he did the same to an officer named Derek Wahl in Tennessee.” I told them everything, from the beginning, and I showed them the tattoo on my arm and the PICC line. I told them the evidence to convict Brother John was at the state police post in Mont Falcon.
When I finished talking, Brother John said, “I want to speak to my lawyer.”
“You’re not denying the accusations?” Peterson said.
“I want to speak to my lawyer.”
Peterson said I would need to come to the station and give my statement to one of the homicide detectives, and I said I didn’t have a problem with that.
Garcia cuffed Brother John and read him his rights, and they marched him out of the studio and toward the elevators. I was holding up the rear.
Bob Watson watched incredulously as we walked by.
I had been waiting for almost two hours in an interrogation room at the substation when a guy wearing a white shirt and a necktie with a picture of Rocky Balboa on it walked in and identified himself as Detective Gregory Sloan. I looked at the tie. Only in Hollywood, I thought. He talked to me for a while with a tape recorder running and gave me some papers to fill out. I told him about Brother John’s drivers back at the Beverly Hills Hotel and he said he would have them brought in for questioning. I asked him if he could help me get a duplicate driver’s license and some money from my Florida bank account.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “Just so you know, John Martin, the man you knew as Brother John, is going to be extradited to Tennessee immediately. His lawyer insisted on it, and we really have no reason to keep him here.”
“He’s a murderer,” I said.
“He’s an alleged murderer in Tennessee. That’s where the crimes took place, and that’s where the trial will be. He hasn’t broken any laws in California. None that we know of. He’ll be on a flight to Nashville with an armed escort early tomorrow morning.”
Garcia and Peterson gave me a ride to the hotel. I took a shower and put on a fresh set of clothes, walked out to the road, and hitched a ride to the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. I went through a set of doors under the big EMERGENCY sign and stopped at the admitting desk. The clerk’s name was Betty.
“I need to see a doctor,” I said.
“Could you tell me the nature of your problem this evening?”
“I’m having chest pain.”
She didn’t bat an eye. “Can I see your insurance card?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Picture ID?”
“Nope.”
She sighed exasperatedly and asked me for my date of birth and my social security number and she gave me a long medical history form to fill out. Rule #110 in Nicholas Colt’s Philosophy of Life: Never have a heart attack without your wallet on you.
I
filled out the form and waited for a while. A young lady wearing pink scrubs called my name and led me to a room with several beds and partitioned by green drapes. She handed me a gown and told me to take my shirt off and lie on the bed. She took my blood pressure and temperature and asked me about the nature of my pain and how long I’d been having it. She gave me an aspirin and taped a nitroglycerine patch on my chest. She said the doctor would be in to see me shortly, and then another young lady wearing blue scrubs wheeled a machine in and put a bunch of wires on my chest. It was an EKG, she said, to let them know what was going on with my heart.
By the time the doctor came in, I was ready to strangle someone. Her nametag said K. Salloum, MD. She looked to be about Brittney’s age. She listened to my chest with her stethoscope and examined the PICC line site.
“Where is your pain?” she said.
I pointed toward my sternum. “Here.”
“And is it a sharp pain, a heaviness, a pressure—”
“More of a pressure,” I said.
“And how long has this been going on?”
“Couple days. It’s hurting really bad right now.”
“On a scale of zero to ten?”
“Ten,” I said.
“Why do you have the PICC line?”
“I had an infection. They sent me home with IV antibiotics.”
Being married to a nurse has its advantages. I was giving Dr. Salloum all the right answers.
“Your EKG looks fine,” she said. “I’m going to order some blood work and a stress test. We’ll need to admit you for twenty-four-hour observation.”
“Can I have something for the pain?”
“Are you allergic to any medications?”
“None that I know of.”
“I’ll have the nurse bring you something.”
She walked away. A glacial age later, Pink Scrubs came back with two syringes in her hand.
“This is morphine,” she said. She uncapped the port on my PICC line and administered the medication. It wasn’t as good as the stuff Brother John had been giving me, but it took the edge off. When she left, I wadded some tape on the end of a tongue depressor and stuck the contraption into the sharps container and fished out the syringes she had discarded. I untied the gown, put my shirt back on, and nonchalantly walked out of the ER and out to the street where I proceeded to vomit in the gutter.
