Kristine Kjarstad shrugged. She felt good again, in charge. By this evening I’ll have the answer to that, she thought.
“Beats me,” she said.
Eileen McCann nodded.
“Are you religious, Kristine?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
She felt the ground give way beneath her again. Eileen McCann smiled for the first time.
“It’s just that I don’t want to offend anyone’s sensibilities,” she said. “It seems to be so easy to do these days. I myself am a Catholic of the cafeteria variety, and last year I received from an ancient aunt a perfectly hideous calendar featuring photographs of the present pope which I put up on the wall in here, largely to get it out of the house. A coworker who recently converted to Islam objected to this, and the Chief made me take it down. His secretary had taken him to court about a Matisse print he had bought to brighten up his office, on the grounds that the seminude subject was, quote, demeaning to her as a woman and a blatant act of sexual harassment in the workplace which made her feel raped by proxy, unquote. So you have to tread delicately.”
“I’m kind of a go-along, get-along Episcopalian,” Kristine replied.
Eileen McCann nodded.
“That’s sufficient for my purposes.”
“Which are?”
“To remind you, and myself, that the human brain favors connections over disjunctions. In other words, we are programmed to privilege data which appear to generate patterns over data which call patterns into question. Hence the eternal temptation of God, and the corresponding necessity of an organized theology by means of which these temptations can be safely controlled.”
Kristine sat looking at her in amazement. How little we know about anyone, she thought, and how much we presume.
“Descending from the theological to the criminal,” McCann continued, “we are faced here with a situation in which the temptation to make connections is almost overwhelming. These killings seem to exemplify all the things we fear most about the society we live in. Random violence, the killer at the door, your name on some unknown agenda. We need to construct a theory to connect and contain these events. What worries me is that in satisfying that urge, we may find ourselves ignoring the facts which tend to contradict any such thesis.”
“Such as?” Kristine demanded.
“Such as the absence of any conceivable motive. People don’t just travel all over the country committing acts of violence without some reason. If it’s a terrorist group, how come they aren’t publicizing their activities? And who are they targeting? In your case they killed a baby, in Kansas a cripple, here a realtor and a lawyer. What’s the connecting thread? It doesn’t exist. There’s no discernible victim typology, by age, gender, ethnicity, profession, religion or social level.”
Kristine Kjarstad nodded.
“I see what you’re saying here, Iles. But I still think there is a pattern.”
“Because of this Atlanta case? Tell me about it.”
Kristine hesitated.
“It doesn’t sound like much. Two whites and three blacks in a firefight. One on either side was killed, the other white is in the hospital.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
“There may not be any. But the white guys were armed with.22 Smiths loaded with this Stinger ammo, and they were carrying a case with handcuffs and a roll of duct tape. I figure they were on their way to hit a house when they ran into a different kind of trouble. Anyway, I’m going down there to speak to the survivor.”
Eileen McCann raised her eyebrows.
“You’re going to Atlanta?”
She sounded disapproving. Kristine felt a need to justify herself.
“I know it’s a long shot, but this could be one of the biggest things in years, Iles. We’d be national celebrities!”
She immediately regretted this last remark. I’ve been spending too much time with Steve Warren, she thought.
“You might, Kristine,” Eileen McCann replied pointedly, “but it would take more than a mere homicidal conspiracy to get this mug on coast-to-coast television. Anyway, I think you’re allowing your dreams of stardom to run away with you. Our presumptive killers don’t have a monopoly on Smith amp; Wesson handguns or fragmenting bullets. Nor is there any reason to suppose that they are the only ones to have realized that handcuffs are the best way to-”
“There’s something else,” Kristine interrupted. “The guy who was killed was going under the name Dale Watson.”
Eileen McCann waved her hand impatiently.
“Dale Watson’s dead. That’s one thing we know for sure. His father went to the morgue and ID’d the body.”
“So the guy in Atlanta is using the name as an alias. But why that name?”
They stared at each other.
“Maybe he read about it in the papers,” McCann suggested. “A kind of copycat thing.”
“Maybe. But that’s kind of weird too. Like you said, these people seem to go to enormous lengths to avoid leaving any clues. So you’d think they’d be smart enough not to use a name which is already known to the police in connection with a similar crime.”
Eileen McCann looked at her for a long time.
“What time is your flight?” she asked.
“I have to check in by one.”
McCann glanced at her watch.
“I’ll give you a ride. We can pick up a bite to eat on the way.”
Much to Kristine’s surprise, Eileen McCann turned out to be something of a foodie. The “bite to eat” consisted of eight helpings of delicious dim sum at a restaurant in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood called Lincolnwood. Eileen was relaxed, witty and informative about her work, colleagues and the sociocultural microclimates of the northern Chicago suburbs. By the time they reached the airport, they were talking like friends.
Instead of dropping Kristine at the curb, Eileen parked in the short-term facility and accompanied her inside, then abruptly dashed off to use the bathroom without saying good-bye. Kristine headed for the gate, where the plane was boarding. She found her seat and settled back with a copy of Vanity Fair she had bought at Sea-Tac the night before.
The plane had leveled off at cruise altitude when she looked up to see Eileen McCann walking down the aisle toward her.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“God, I hate flying!” the other woman exclaimed. “Two hours without a smoke.”
She smiled and shrugged.
“Here’s the deal. You get the TV coverage, and they can stick me on NPR and local radio. Even my mother conceded that my voice wasn’t so bad. Or as she tactfully put it, ‘If you could date by phone, the guys’d be all over you like an old coat.’”
She settled into an empty seat across the aisle, pulled out a battered paperback and didn’t utter a single word for the rest of the flight. Kristine dozed.
The descent into Atlanta was bumpy, the landing hard. It was pouring with rain, sheets of it falling from a sky the color of mud. They exited the plane, passing through an intermediate zone of clammy air before the air-conditioning took over. It was like walking through a hot shower. Among the crowd at the gate was a tubby black man with glasses and a mustache holding a piece of cardboard with Kristine’s name written on it in pink marker.
“Were you sent to pick me up?” she asked him.
“You Miss Kjarstad?”
He pronounced it perfectly.
“That’s right.”
“I figured you far taller, more intense,” the man went on with a broad smile. “The Nike type. Charlie told me about that. He was very impressed, you knowing Greek and all.”
She recognized the voice now. He had called her the day before to make final arrangements for her visit.
“You’re Lamont Wingate, right?”
The man stuck out his hand.
“Pleased to meet you.”
Kristine turned to introduce her companion.
“This is Detective Eileen McC
ann of the Evanston City Police. She also has an interest in this case.”
Lamont Wingate shook Eileen’s hand too.
“It’s my pleasure to welcome you to Georgia, ladies.”
“But I thought we arranged to meet at the hospital,” Kristine said. “There was no need to come all the way out here to the airport.”
Lamont Wingate suddenly looked serious.
“Yeah, well, there’s been a change of plan, you see. I’ve been trying to reach you all day. If I’d known you were in Evanston, I’d have called there. The thing is, I’m afraid you’ve made a wasted trip.”
Kristine felt her stomach contract painfully.
“What do you mean?”
“That guy you came to talk to? He’s dead.”
“No!”
It was a shriek. Eileen McCann put her hand on Kristine’s arm.
“You mean he had a relapse?” she demanded.
Lamont Wingate shook his head.
“Did it hisself. Called the night nurse as she passed on her way back from tending to another patient and asked her for a drink. She went off to get it, he lifted a hypodermic needle off her cart. Time they found him, it was too late. ‘Exsanguinated,’ they called it at the hospital. Found an artery and stuck the needle right in there. Blood pressure does the rest. The mattress was soaked right through.”
He shook his head sadly.
“I sure am sorry you ladies had to come all this way for nothing.”
20
As the boat slowed and turned, making for the pier, I was able to distinguish the marks on the hull, large white letters reading POLICE. I almost broke out laughing.
“Well, Sam, looks like the cops have decided to pay you a visit anyway!”
I set down the binoculars and turned to relish my moment of triumph. Then I saw the rifle lying on the bed, and remembered the doctrine that Sam had taught his followers, the Secret that gave them the power of life and death over everyone else. I suddenly had visions of a violent clash with the law followed by a long siege with an uncertain ending. The essential elements were all in place: a tightly knit group of people in the grip of mass psychosis who believed themselves to be chosen and protected by God, and who had access to an arsenal of automatic weapons.
Sam had been staring at me all this while, biting his thumb compulsively. Maybe he sensed what I was thinking, because at the same moment I dived at the bed and grabbed the rifle, be burled himself at me and almost knocked it out of my hands. But I managed to hang on, twisted around and freed myself enough to smash the butt down on his head. He let go and sank to the floor with a moan.
I backed away, pointing the gun at him.
“OK, Sam, you want to test your little theory? Go right ahead! Let’s see if God miraculously stops the bullet in midair before it has a chance to blow your fucking brains all over the wall! Or maybe it’ll just bounce off you. What do you think?”
I was hysterical with rage and loathing. I wanted to riddle him with bullets, blow him away, demonstrate once and for all the reality of my existence by annihilating his.
“I guess I was wrong,” Sam murmured, sitting up. His head was bleeding, I noted with pleasure.
“I guess you were! Hey, looks like I cut your scalp open when I hit you back there. Tell me, is your pain real? You see, I have no way of knowing. Maybe you’re one of those specters you were talking about, just a piece of scenery in the great cosmic farce!”
“First Dale, then Russ and Pat, Mark and Rick. And now you, Phil. I was wrong about all of you. I’ve been wrong all along. Maybe there is no one else. Maybe I am alone.”
Bursts of gunfire resounded in the distance, one-two-three, one-two, one-two-three-four. Sam crawled to his feet.
“Hold it!” I told him.
He didn’t pay any attention. Throwing a quick glance out of the window, he ran from the room.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!”
But I didn’t. Despite my fantasies of blasting him away, when the moment came I couldn’t pull the trigger. Then I remembered the rack of guns next door, and ran after him. But Sam rushed straight on through and out into the hall. His footsteps hammered briefly over the wooden boards, then fell silent.
I had no idea what he intended to do, but my priority was to contact the police. I was so intent on this that I didn’t notice the diminutive figure in the doorway of the last room until we collided. The child went sprawling. I barked an apology, and then time stopped as I realized that he was my child, my son, David.
He recovered before I did.
“Hi, Dad,” he said.
He seemed more shy than surprised to see me.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the gun I was carrying.
I whispered his name, my eyes filling with tears. I could see at once it scared him. Here he’d been for so long, trying to pretend that everything was all right when he knew it wasn’t, and now the person he’d always counted on to make it right was falling to pieces in front of him.
“Hi, guy,” I said casually, drying my eyes and giving him a hug. “How’ve you been?”
“OK. Is Mom here?”
I should have expected this, but it threw me. I could only shake my head.
“Where is she?”
It was only then that I noticed Ellie, stretched out on the sofa with an air of petulant abandon.
“She’s not here,” I said to David. “Look, we’ve got to-”
The sound of gunfire filled the air again, a long burst followed by several single shots.
“Fuck’s going on?” grumbled Ellie, gathering her robe around her.
I took David’s hand and led him outside. It sounded as if the situation down at the waterfront was deteriorating rapidly. If the police had come under fire, they couldn’t be expected to care too much about any given individual’s exact role in the island community. The last thing we needed was to get caught up in a firefight between Sam’s latter-day Templars and a SWAT team who saw everyone on the island as a potential cop-killer.
The scene outside was one of frantic confusion. Everyone there had heard the shots, and they were milling about in the yard in front of the hall, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Maybe I could have swung them behind me if I’d had the right speech ready, told them that Sam was the false Messiah and that I had come to bring them the truth. They might have believed me, or at least enough of them to influence the outcome.
As it was, I just said, “The police are here. Sam’s gone to talk to them.”
They stared at me with a kind of mute horror, as though they had just been addressed by a domestic animal. I was a nonperson for them, I remembered, a mere mock-up of a human being. The sounds I made were of no more significance than the cries of the gulls overhead. Gripping David’s hand, I started to push my way through them. At first the crowd melted away as we approached. Then I saw the lean blond standing in our way.
“Hi, ’Lissa,” said David.
“Leave the boy,” she told me.
She sounded mean and determined. The crowd started to close in around us.
“You’re going to have to take him,” I said, raising the gun. “And it won’t be so easy this time.”
I turned so that I had the wall at my back. I don’t know how the confrontation would have ended, but at that moment Sam appeared, sprinting at top speed up the trail, arms and legs pumping, face white and strained.
“The apocalypse is at hand!” he shouted. “The dark powers are massing in the vales of Ulro!”
This wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular. Sam was in rhetorical mode, singing arias to the crowd teeming in his mind. Then he saw me and David and Melissa and the others, and switched registers. This was part of his power, I realized, the ability to move at a moment’s notice from front to back stage, to be at once the star tenor and the theater manager.
“There are three of them,” he gasped. “Mark, Rick and Lenny. They’re disguised as cops. They shot Andy and they’re coming here. We’ve
got to be ready to deal with them.”
He looked at me, then turned to the crowd with a sad smile.
“I thought this man was my friend. I offered him the secret of life. I even brought his child back from the dead. Yet he rejected me.”
He lowered his head, displaying the clotted blood.
“Like the first Christ, I have been scourged. Like Him, I have been betrayed. But where He had only one Judas, I have a legion of traitors and spies at work amongst my disciples. But now the hour of reckoning is at hand! Now is the time for the true believers among you to stand up and be counted!”
He looked around them all with a sweeping gesture.
“Do any of you guys want out? If so, get moving! Because we don’t want anyone here who doesn’t belong here, right?”
There were scattered cries of “Right!” No one made any move to leave.
“OK,” said Sam quietly. “Everybody get inside the hall. Break out the guns and assume your positions, but don’t fire till I give the command.”
The crowd started to disperse. The only one to linger was the scrawny blond.
“The kid should stay,” she said.
Sam glanced at her. He shook his head.
“We don’t want them here, Melissa. They’re dead. They always were, and soon they will be.”
This threat was clear enough. Sam’s people were arming themselves, and David and I would be legitimate targets. I picked him up and ran as fast as I could up one of the alleys between the cabins, getting into cover.
“Where’re we going?” asked David. “Why don’t we stay with ’Lissa?”
He sounded scared. I was too shocked to say anything. In the coming showdown between Mark and Sam, we would be legitimate targets for both sides. Neither would hesitate to shoot us down. They might disagree about Sam’s leadership, but both accepted the truth of the “Secret” he had been peddling. And stripped of its theological pretensions, this was simply a license to kill. Our only hope was to get as far away from the hall as possible. I made it as far as the last of the outbuildings before pausing to rest. In front of us stretched the zone of rough-cut scrub we had to cross to reach the relative safety of the woods.
Dark Specter Page 29