The Cotten Stone Omnibus: It started with The Grail Conspiracy... (The Cotten Stone Mysteries)

by Lynn Sholes

  windbreaker

  “Mr. Olsen,” Sergeant Carillo said, “we now have over sixty security officers looking for your son. If you’ll have a seat in the waiting area, I’ll call you just as soon as he’s located.”

  “Thanks,” Alan said, rising. He had started to tell the officer about Devin’s . . . talents. But he decided they didn’t need to know that in order to find the boy. If need be, he would go into detail with the police later. Chances were it wouldn’t ever come to that.

  Alan sat in the small police substation lobby and watched the officer behind the glass enclosure talk to someone who had lost his wallet. The constant muffled roar of the stadium crowd rumbled in the background.

  Devin was his only child. He’d lost his wife six years ago when a drunk driver ran a stop sign as she was going to pick up their son from daycare. From that moment, the boy became Alan’s entire world. If something happened to Devin today, he would never forgive himself.

  The door opened and an officer led a teenager past Alan into the next room. There was blood on the young man’s shirt. A fight, Alan thought.

  With sixty officers looking for Devin, they would have to find him soon. Even though Dolphin Stadium was huge, it was a contained area with controlled exits. He couldn’t stay lost for long.

  And then there was the other possibility—one that Alan kept pushing back in the shadows of his thoughts.

  What if someone had kidnapped Devin?

  “Mr. Olsen?”

  Alan looked up as a man in a dark green golf shirt and Dockers slacks stood in the doorway. A gold badge was attached to his belt, as was a small automatic in a black holster.

  Alan stood. “Have you found Devin?”

  “I’m Lieutenant Martinez. Metro-Dade.”

  Alan shook his hand. “My son?”

  “Sir, please come with me.”

  Alan felt his stomach twist as he followed the detective out onto the concourse. Twenty paces later, they stepped into an elevator. Alan felt it drop just like that knot in his gut. When the doors opened, they were in the underbelly of the stadium.

  Martinez led Alan along a well-lit corridor to a door labeled No Admittance. The detective slid a card through a security lock mechanism and the door clicked open. He opened the first door they came to in the hallway and motioned Alan into a dark room.

  As the door closed behind them, Alan saw that they were in some sort of video surveillance center. The far wall was covered with at least three dozen video monitors. All showed live color feeds from cameras throughout the stadium.

  Three officers sat at a long table in front of the monitor wall. Martinez guided Alan to a position behind one of the seated officers. “Mr. Olsen. Take a look at monitor thirty-three, please,” Martinez said. Tapping the shoulder of one of the tech officers at the table, the lieutenant said, “Rewind that recording for me, again, please.”

  A moment later Alan stared in amazement as the monitor showed him leaned against the wall watching the mass of fans flowing by. He saw himself turn and speak to a bearded man who had wandered over and stood beside him—the man wore a red windbreaker.

  At one point, the guy took hold of Alan’s arm. He remembered the guy spouting off a bunch of boring statistics on the history of the Miami Dolphins. Now that he thought about it, the guy seemed like he was trying awfully hard to keep Alan’s attention.

  At that moment, the seated officer froze the picture, and a set of numbers on the bottom of the image designated the individual frame.

  “Now take a look at monitor thirty-four, Mr. Olsen,” Martinez said. “Watch the left side of the image.”

  As Alan watched, he saw the exit to the men’s room. “There’s my son! That’s Devin.” He pointed to the screen.

  Devin Olsen emerged from the exit and turned to his left. At that moment, the officer froze the picture. The numbers on the bottom of the image matched the frozen image on thirty-three.

  “Now, play both in sync,” Martinez said to the officer.

  As the two images played, Devin walked away from the men’s room exit and blended into the crowd. Two boys, appearing to be slightly older than Devin, followed right behind until they were out of frame. At almost the same instant, the guy beside Alan in the adjacent monitor turned and wandered away, also disappearing into the river of fans.

  “I don’t understand,” Alan said to Martinez. “Where is my son? Where did he go?”

  “Mr. Olsen, I’m sorry, but we believe he left the stadium with two other boys.”

  Alan took a step back. “That’s impossible. He would never . . .”

  “Mr. Olsen,” Martinez said, motioning with his arm. “Please take a look at monitor fourteen.”

  Alan slowly followed the detective’s gesture. He moved forward and glared at the video monitor labeled 14. It showed the parking lot somewhere outside the stadium.

  As the video played, Alan swallowed hard, unable to believe what was there. A wave of nausea swept over him when he clearly saw his son playing a handheld video game while walking with the two boys who had followed Devin from the men’s room. A few paces behind was the bearded man in the red windbreaker.

  truck stop

  Tera thrashed in her sleep, her breathing rapid as she trembled in her mother’s arms.

  Lindsay curled behind her daughter and snuggled her. “Shh, baby. It’s okay. It’s okay,” she whispered, stroking Tera’s hair.

  Soon, the girl settled into slow, rhythmic breaths as she drifted back to sleep. But Lindsay’s eyes stayed wide open. She stared out the rear window of the Dodge conversion van. The fold-down seat seemed comfortable at first, but after several hours in the cold, cramped space, she ached—her limbs were stiff and sore.

  Lindsay had spread an old sleeping bag on top of the makeshift bed and used a wedding ring-pattern quilted comforter for warmth. It was a wonder the child could sleep at all with the glare of the lights from the truck-stop signs and the never-ending growl of the big diesels as they came and went in the night. But it was cheaper than staying in a motel. Once the cash she had withdrawn from her checking and meager savings accounts ran out, there would be nothing left.

  How could it have all wound up like this?

  The cause of their flight started two weeks ago when Tera and Lindsay were grocery shopping. Suddenly, her daughter dropped a bag of fruit and gasped.

  “One of them is here, Momma,” Tera said, looking up at her mother. “He’s here to take me.” Her blue eyes welled up and spilled over, the tears leaving shiny streaks down her cheeks. “I don’t want to go.”

  Lindsay held Tera. “You’re not going anywhere, baby. No one can ever take you from me. Not ever.” She rocked back and forth, holding her so close she felt both their heartbeats.

  As she consoled her daughter, Lindsay caught sight of a man at the end of the aisle. He was tall, gaunt, with a shock of snow-white hair, and he appeared to be watching them. When he saw Lindsay’s stare, he turned and walked away.

  Lindsay had learned long ago that Tera saw and intuited things. In Tera’s earliest years, Lindsay and her husband found it amusing—almost entertaining. Sometimes Tera would tell her mother that the kitties were at the door waiting to be fed. The door would be closed, but when Lindsay went to look, sure enough, Bogey and Bacall would be waiting for their dinner. Or Tera would stand next to the phone seconds before it would ring—many times she would announce who was calling before picking up. And from the time she could compose sentences, she talked about heaven and how she had one day looked down on earth and chosen Lindsay and Neil as her parents.

  If not for Tera, they would never have joined the local church. Before Tera started showing signs of her talents, Neil and Lindsay had no interest in religion. God was never a part of their lives.

  But as Tera grew, she seemed to communicate directly with God. It wasn’t that Tera told them to join a c
hurch. She hadn’t. It was rather that Neil and Lindsay sought answers about their remarkable daughter and hoped to find them there.

  Tera’s talents grew more thought-provoking as she got older, and as others began to notice, she became regarded as strange, peculiar—an oddity. About three weeks after Tera started kindergarten, Lindsay got called in for a conference.

  “Tera is a lovely little girl,” the teacher said. “She is certainly bright—even gifted. And her artwork is amazing. But Mrs. Jordan, we are having a little problem with her. Sometimes Tera frightens the other children.”

  “Frightens?”

  “Well, she, um, says inappropriate things to them or tells them things that upset them.”

  Lindsay sat numbly. “What do you mean? What kind of things?

  “Like today. She asked one of the boys why his father had drowned all their puppies. William, that’s the boy’s name, argued that the puppies got sick and died. But Tera insisted until William ended up terribly upset and crying. His mother came in, and as you can imagine she was disturbed. She told me that their family is financially struggling right now and couldn’t afford to feed a litter of pups. Her husband had done what he had to do. But they didn’t want their son to know. He is too young to grasp what had happened.” The teacher shook her head. “I don’t understand how Tera—”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lindsay said. She wasn’t sure what else to say or how she could explain. All she wanted to do was run home and enfold her daughter in her arms.

  “And there have been some other instances,” the teacher continued. “But not quite as upsetting as the latest incident. I thought you would want to know so you can talk to Tera.”

  “Yes, I will. I’ll do that. Thank you.”

  “Most everyone around here knows you and Tera, but you have to realize William’s family moved here recently. His mother wanted to know who Tera was. She asked for your address and phone number. Of course you know it’s against policy to give out that information.”

  “I appreciate that,” Lindsay said, hoping she would not have to confront William’s mother. The woman would never understand about Tera.

  Afterward, Lindsay did talk to Tera, but it was hard for her daughter to understand something that seemed to come so naturally to her. A month later, there was one more similar conference with the teacher, but that wasn’t what drove Lindsay to withdraw her daughter from public school and start home schooling. She made that decision on Tera’s birthday. She had sent out a birthday party invitation to every child in Tera’s kindergarten class.

  No one came.

  Lindsay’s heart broke for her baby girl. She promised to shield her from the rest of the world—a world unready and unwilling to deal with a child like Tera.

  Besides becoming aware that Tera was special and had incredible gifts, Lindsay also learned to trust her daughter’s insights. If Tera said someone was in that grocery store to take her away, Lindsay suspected she was telling the truth, but always in the back of Lindsay’s mind was the seed of doubt—that her daughter was mentally unbalanced. Lindsay refused to give in to that thought.

  After seeing the tall, gaunt man at the end of the store aisle, she had grabbed Tera’s hand and left, abandoning the half-filled cart. As they were about to pass through the doors, Tera hesitated and turned to stare into the store.

  Lindsay looked back in response. He was there, standing to the side of the checkout counter, watching.

  “Hurry,” Lindsay said, tugging her daughter’s hand, leading her to their van.

  As Lindsay had driven along the main highway that day, she checked her rearview mirror. A silver car followed. It was never close enough for her to see the driver. Something told her not to go home. She turned along a road heading in the opposite direction from her farm.

  The car followed.

  Lindsay made another turn toward the local Wal-Mart.

  Again the car followed. Then it suddenly dropped back as the driver seemed to sense her suspicion, finally disappearing altogether.

  For days after the grocery store incident, Lindsay kept a vigil at the window, anticipating seeing a silver car ramble down the dirt driveway. Then, one night Lindsay awoke from a frightening dream. In the dream she had walked to the end of the drive, taking the garbage to the roadside for pickup the next day. It was near twilight, in that nether realm just before daylight surrenders to the night. She heard it first, making her look down the road. The silver car raced toward her, then turned into the drive, leaving her behind in terror. She ran, but as often happens in dreams, Lindsay’s legs didn’t respond, and she fought for every sluggish step. Before she could reach the house, two men in black suits carried Tera to the car. One man threw Tera in the rear seat, her arms tied behind her back. He climbed in behind her as the other took the driver’s seat.

  “Momma,” Tera screamed before her next cry was muffled, then silenced. The car sped off, passing Lindsay again but in the opposite direction, spraying grit and dust in her eyes. The dream came to an abrupt halt and Lindsay sat up in bed, her mouth and throat dry as if she had actually breathed in the cloud of dust. She shot to her feet and scrambled to Lindsay’s room, relieved to find her daughter safe and sleeping. She crawled in next to Tera and held her through the rest of the night.

  Not long after that night, Tera had stared out the window and told her that someone was coming for her. That’s when Lindsay called Cotten.

  She covered every window after locking them all. Neither Lindsay nor Tera left the house, living on the food stored in the pantry and freezer. She had not even taken the garbage to the roadside.

  Finally, out of supplies and terrified that at any moment someone would come and rip Tera from her, Lindsay decided she could no longer wait on Cotten.

  Slipping out of the house in the middle of the night with only a few hastily packed items, she and Tera had headed south. Driving straight through the next day, they stopped only for short breaks to stretch and fill up with gas. Finally, in late afternoon, Lindsay pulled into a truck stop in Brunswick, Georgia.

  Now, as she lay with Tera in the back of the van, the midnight cold seeped into her and reminded Lindsay of the chill of being followed that day not so long ago. Since the incident in the supermarket, she had tried countless times to figure out who would want to take Tera. And why? If she knew, then maybe she would know how to fight for her daughter. Until then, they would stay on the run. Hopefully, Cotten would find her note and come searching for them.

  The monotonous on-off cycle of the red neon truck-stop sign reminded her of what happened when she and Tera had finally arrived home the day they were followed.

  “You okay, baby?” Lindsay had asked.

  “He was ruby,” Tera said, so low that Lindsay wasn’t sure she heard right. Tera’s gaze had left the window to find her mother’s eyes. “That man in the store. He was ruby red. Like Pastor Albrecht.”

  arrival

  “This is it.” Cotten pulled the rental into the dirt drive of Lindsay Jordan’s farm.

  “You’re right,” John Tyler said, sitting beside her. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s taken care of the place in quite a while.”

  Cotten had gone to Louisville to pick up John after spending the previous afternoon searching the barn and farmhouse again for additional clues to Lindsay and Tera’s whereabouts. Once she realized the artwork and poetry were created by an eight-year-old girl, their lifestyle and sudden disappearance became even more of a mystery.

  On the drive from the city to the farm community of Loretto, Cotten and John discussed every detail of what she had discovered. She showed him the note from Lindsay saying they could wait no longer for Cotten, and had already fled.

  It took many miles before Cotten had calmed her nerves at seeing John for the first time in almost a year.

  She had waited like a schoolgirl with butterflies of anticipation until she spotte
d him emerging from the crowd of arriving passengers. When he took off his sunglasses, she stared into those deep ocean-blue eyes, and a flood of emotion washed over her. At that moment, she felt safer than she could ever remember.

  “You look wonderful,” John said.

  She tilted her head, taking in all of him and smiling. “Not too bad, yourself.” The urge to cry with happiness welled up, and she pushed it back into the secret place deep inside where it lived. Her words felt forced as she struggled to make light conversation. “I thought you’d be decked out in your official cardinal’s robes and a gold cross around your neck. Instead you show up in jeans and a polo shirt. What must the ranks of heaven think of you?”

  John smiled warmly. “They’re all preoccupied with much more important matters.” He took her hands in his. “So, Cotten Stone, how are you?”

  “I’m wonderful now that you’re here. But I feel guilty pulling you away from real work and making you come to this out-of-the-way place. After all, this may turn out to be nothing but a wasted trip.”

  “I’m here because you’re here,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “I wanted to see you, mystery or not.”

  She hugged him back then put her palm to his cheek. “Thank you.” For a moment she felt frozen, her eyes locked on his as if she couldn’t look away—didn’t want to look away—deliciously drowning in the sea of blue.

  When she met John seven years ago, he was teaching biblical archaeology at a small college in upstate New York. She sought out his expertise in identifying an ancient relic that was thought to be the Cup used to collect the blood of Christ at the Crucifixion. Working together they delivered it to the Vatican after stopping a plot to use the human DNA from residue found in the Cup to clone Christ. The Grail conspiracy thrust John and Cotten into the harsh limelight of notoriety.

  John was called to Rome and appointed by the Holy Father as prelate of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology. He was soon consecrated a bishop.