They

by J. F. Gonzalez

  “And what if you aren’t back by nine and I haven’t heard from you?” Vince asked.

  “Take the first flight back to Irvine,” Mike said. “Leave tonight. Don’t even check out, just leave.”

  “You have enough cash?” Frank asked.

  Vince nodded. “Yeah.”

  Mike buttoned his coat. “Get back to Irvine and wait. Take our stuff with you. If you haven’t heard from us in three days, call my wife.” He rattled off the number. “Tell Carol about the safe deposit box.”

  “Then what?”

  Mike’s features turned grim. “Then, we wait to see what happens.”

  VINCE DOUBLE LOCKED the door when Mike and Frank left. Then he changed out of the suit into a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

  He flopped down on the bed and turned the TV on. He channel-surfed idly for twenty minutes. Daytime TV was all soap operas and talk shows. Vince grew bored with it after awhile and turned the TV off.

  I need a shower, he thought. He rose to his feet and headed to the bathroom.

  Twenty minutes later he felt refreshed. As he finger-combed his hair, his mind recapped the confrontation at the Family Cupboard parking lot. He’d been going over the events in his mind since it all happened, and he still didn’t know how they’d been tracked down. It was obvious the way those guys had suddenly come out of nowhere and began casually walking toward them that they’d been watching the place for a while. We were probably followed there. I wonder if that means they watched us last night at Reverend Powell’s. It was a distinct possibility. If that was the case, why hadn’t they stormed Hank’s house last night? Maybe they knew we were armed.

  That didn’t make sense, though. If they knew that Frank and Mike and Hank were armed, why did they bother with the attack at the Family Cupboard? The more Vince thought about it, the more confused and scared he got. It was as if they’d just sprung out of the ground, guns in hand, bent on killing. Thank God Frank had been aware of what was happening. He must have noticed something was going amiss. Vince hadn’t been aware of anything until Frank’s body slammed the first assassin.

  As Vince exited the bathroom the fight replayed in his mind. He hoped they hadn’t been recognized. The shootout at the Family Cupboard had happened so fast that the few people that witnessed it were probably too scared to remember faces. He hoped Tom Hoffman and Reverend Powell were all right.

  He also wondered if they would talk.

  They won’t say anything, Vince thought, sitting on the bed, his back against the headboard. Especially Reverend Powell. He sees this as a spiritual crusade. He might have been able to convince Tom Hoffman to be quiet, but suppose he wasn’t? Tom might talk. If he does, the police will be looking for us. And if that’s the case, they might eventually find us here.

  Vince felt his throat grow sore. It felt as if he’d swallowed a medicine ball that had lodged in his throat. He always felt like this when he was scared. He remembered feeling this way Sunday afternoon at the Irvine Airport when that guy shot at him and Tracy. His stomach felt leaden; his head woozy. They could be here any minute. He debated staying put or leaving altogether. If he left, he might be able to put some distance between himself and police but they would catch him eventually, wouldn’t they? He wouldn’t know what to do in flight. They’d be on to him quickly.

  He thought of the possible ramifications of what might happen if he were caught. They could trace him to the Marriot here in Harrisburg. If they did, he wouldn’t put up a fight. He’d go with the police willingly. And he’d talk. He’d tell them everything, beginning with the news of his mother’s murder and the attempt on his own life in Irvine. He’d tell them about Frank and Mike, tell them about The Children of the Night and how the three of them believed the cult was bent on killing him and was responsible for the shootout at the Family Cupboard. He’d urge them to find Mike and Frank. Once in custody, Mike would be compelled to call his lawyer friend Billy Grecko and finally tell him everything, right? And if so, Billy’s connections could go to work. And if they found Mary Ann and even Clint, all the better. They would have corroboration between their stories.

  But then suppose the police don’t believe me? Suppose after all is said and done, Mike and Frank and I are arrested and charged with murder?

  As frightening as the possibility seemed, Vince didn’t see it as very likely. Surely the police would be able to identify the three dead men at the Family Cupboard. Their guns would be traceable and that should lead the police to The Children of the Night. Even if the trail didn’t immediately lead to the cult, it would help cast suspicion away from Vince, Mike, and Frank. The police would have to believe them.

  The more Vince thought of the possible ramifications of what might happen if the police found them, the more nervous he got. He wished Mike and Frank were here. It would help calm his fears. It would bring him a much needed reality check on the whole thing.

  I need to talk to somebody, Vince thought. He looked at the phone as Tracy popped into his mind. I need to call her. She knows part of what’s going on. Besides, she’s got to be worried now. Vince reached across the bed and picked up his cell phone.

  Frank’s warning from a few nights ago against contacting Tracy rose briefly as he dialed Tracy’s work number. What Frank doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

  The phone was picked up on the second ring. “This is Tracy.”

  “Tracy, it’s Vince.”

  “Vince!” Tracy’s voice cracked with surprise. She paused, as if she didn’t know what to say.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about a few days ago. I didn’t mean to cut you off so short, but—”

  “That’s okay,” she said, her voice lowered and cautious. Vince knew that she was probably lowering it because it was the middle of the workday in California, and she wanted to keep the conversation private. “I know you’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”

  “That’s not the worst of it.”

  “Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “I’m in Pennsylvania,” Vince said, bursting at the seams to tell her everything. “Are you busy right now? I really need to talk.”

  “I’m okay,” Tracy said quickly. There was a short beat, then: “Listen, maybe it’ll be better if I wasn’t here at work. Why don’t I call you in thirty minutes.”

  “Okay. You going home?”

  “Yeah. There’s not much going on here anyway. I’ll call you back, okay?”

  “Okay. I love you.”

  “I love you too.” They hung up.

  Vince sat on the bed and channel surfed again, thinking about what he was going to tell Tracy. If Laura were alive he would have told her everything. He and Laura never kept anything from each other. They’d always discussed their problems with each other. He needed that back again in his life, and Tracy had grown to be more than a lover. He felt he could trust her. After all, she already knew a lot of what was going on, and she’d almost been killed herself. She deserved to know.

  Talking with Tracy would keep his mind off of what was happening with Mike and Frank.

  His cell phone rang thirty-five minutes later. Vince picked it up on the first ring. “Hello.”

  “It’s me,” Tracy said.

  “Good. I’m glad you called. You home?”

  “Yeah.” He could hear her puttering in the kitchen. “So tell me what’s going on.”

  Vince didn’t know where to begin. “I hope you aren’t too busy tonight. This could take awhile.”

  “Indulge me,” she said. “I don’t have a very busy social calendar anymore. Especially after meeting you.”

  Vince smiled. “Neither do I.”

  “Why don’t you start with the morning you called and told me you were leaving for PA again?”

  Vince began with the phone call from Frank telling him to meet him at the restaurant in Irvine and the sudden revelation that they’d grown up together, to Frank’s story about The Children of the Night and his knowledge of his mother’s murder and Laura’s death. He
continued with their meeting with Mike Peterson and the background story of the cult. Tracy gasped several times during the narrative, as if she were reacting to the stunning news. When Vince got to the morning they left for Pennsylvania, he apologized again. “I’m sorry I was so short with you, but Frank was standing right there. He kept insisting that I tell you nothing even when I told them you were okay. He was acting like…like some damned paranoid conspiracy theorist.”

  “That’s okay,” Tracy said, her tone of voice displaying her shock and surprise at the story. “I guess I can understand his caution under the circumstances.”

  Vince continued the narrative, taking her through their arrival in Ephrata, their meeting with Reverend Powell and sifting through the box his mother had buried in her backyard. He told her about the newspaper clippings, the photo albums. “My mom was definitely a member of this cult,” he told her. “She was a bona-fide devil worshipper. I don’t know what prompted her change-of-heart, but something must’ve triggered it. She was afraid of something, and that’s why she took me and fled to California twenty-five years ago.”

  “Do you think she knew about these murders?” Tracy asked, fascinated with the story now. “The Manson case and those others?”

  “I don’t know,” Vince said. “She may have suspected something. I don’t think she had first-hand knowledge of them, but she wrote notes in the margins of the clippings. Something like, ‘did Sam order this?’”

  “And who’s Sam?”

  “Samuel F. Garrison,” Vince said. “Some big tycoon. Sits on the board of several major U.S. corporations, including our employer.”

  Tracy gasped.

  “I know,” Vince said. “It surprised the hell out of me, too.”

  “I’m…stunned.” Tracy’s voice sounded like she was surprised, shocked by the allegations. “And the other crimes…the Son of Sam case. You think the Sam in that case was related?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it, but…”

  “No, I mean, think about it,” Tracy said. “David Berkowitz was the Son of Sam, right? He originally claimed that ‘Sam’ was a guy actually named Sam, who was a neighbor of his in Yonkers, New York. This guy Sam, his sons were involved in some shady activities themselves, and it was speculated they knew Berkowitz and were involved in a satanic cult with him. It was also believed they may have participated in the Son of Sam killings.”

  “How do you know about all this?” Vince asked.

  “It was on Frontline last week.” He detected a grin in Tracy’s voice.

  “Well, that sounds plausible,” Vince said. “Mom had newspaper clippings on the Son of Sam case in that box.”

  “Do you think the ‘Sam’ in the Berkowitz case might be Sam Garrison?”

  “Maybe.” Vince suddenly felt thirsty and he reached for a plastic cup and headed to the bathroom to fill it with tap water. “I don’t know what to believe. All I know is that this cult found mom and killed her. And they want me for something.” He told Tracy about the conversation with Reverend Powell last night, then their meeting with Tom Hoffman this morning. When he got to the shootout at the Family Cupboard Tracy gave a startled gasp.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “No,” Vince said. He took a sip of water then wrapped up the story, ending with their arrival at the Marriot. “Frank and Mike are probably in Lititz now trying to find this Mary Ann chick. They think this Clint guy may have told her more than Tom Hoffman let on to us at the restaurant. They think she may know more about this Mark Lancaster guy and his sidekick.”

  “What about the guys who shot at you?” Tracy asked. “Tell me more about them.”

  “There’s not much to tell. They looked young. It happened so fast.”

  “They just came out of nowhere and started shooting at you?” It sounded like Tracy still couldn’t believe the sudden violence had erupted a second time.

  Vince described the shootout again. “They were definitely after me,” he said. “I crawled under cars to hide from them, and one of them knelt down and tried shooting at me under the car I was hiding under.” He paused, trying to remember. “It was like the minute we stepped out of that restaurant they came out of wherever it was they were hiding and started weaving their way through the parking lot toward me. Luckily Frank caught on early, or the guy he body slammed would have met me between two parked cars and killed me right there and they would have been gone.”

  “You’re probably right,” Tracy agreed. She took a deep breath, as if composing herself. “Wow. It just…it’s just so scary to hear about all this. I’m glad you’re okay, though.”

  “So am I.”

  “So they were young guys? In their twenties, maybe?”

  “Early twenties,” Vince remembered. “Blond hair, blue eyes. One of them had brown hair. They were around my height, very slender, in good shape. There was nothing about their dress or mannerisms that really differentiated them from anybody else you would see.”

  “In other words, they blended in well,” Tracy said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see a car they might have come out of?”

  “No.” Vince tried to remember. He couldn’t remember them exiting a vehicle.

  “Are you sure you killed them?”

  “Yeah.” There was no doubt in his mind that the three would-be assassins were killed.

  Tracy sighed in relief. “Do you think one of them was the guy that shot at us at the airport.”

  “I don’t know,” Vince said. He felt better talking to Tracy. “Everything happened so fast, I couldn’t tell.”

  “My guess is there might be more of them. You have to be careful.”

  “I am. But…I’m also afraid that the police might catch up to me.”

  “They won’t. You did the right thing in getting out of Lititz and holing up in Harrisburg. You’re also lucky this happened in a rural community. The cops back there are probably chasing their tails.”

  Tracy was probably right. Of course, the Pennsylvania State Police would be involved in the investigation, but he and Mike and Frank were already long gone.

  “I just hope Frank and Mike can find out more from this Mary Ann girl,” Vince said. “If they can find her.”

  “Maybe they will,” Tracy said. “I do think you shouldn’t mention to them that you called me. They’ll only get mad.”

  “And paranoid.”

  Tracy laughed. “That, too.”

  Vince felt a thousand times better; he relaxed. “I’m so glad I called.”

  “I am, too.”

  “I still don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said, looking at his reflection in the mirror across the room. “Talking about this helped bring it all in perspective.”

  “I think you should come home,” Tracy said.

  “I will. Probably tomorrow.”

  “You need to come home and stay with me. I’ll take care of you. I’ll hide you from anybody that dares threaten you.”

  Vince laughed. The way she had said that was both melodramatic in a corny way, but also serious. She’d sounded so cute to him in that brief minute that he just wanted to reach right through the telephone lines and hug her.

  “I won’t be able to call you again until I get back,” Vince said. “Will that be okay?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Call me the minute you get home. Cut and run from your friends if you have to, but call me. I need to know you’re safe.”

  “I will.” Vince paused. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  They said goodbye and hung up.

  Chapter Sixteen

  FRANK CALLED FROM Mike Peterson’s cell phone at eight-thirty. “We’re on the turnpike,” he said. “We should be back in about twenty minutes.”

  “What happened?” Vince asked. He’d spent the past three hours watching a movie called Grosse Point Blank, which was hilarious. It was about a hired hit man attending his ten-year high school reunion.

  “We’ll talk when we ge
t back,” was all Frank would say.

  Vince tried to get back into the movie after the phone call, but couldn’t concentrate on it. Finally, when Mike and Frank stepped into the room Vince turned the TV off. “Okay, I’m bursting at the seams here, guys. Talk to me.”

  Both of them looked frustrated and disappointed. They were still in their suits. Frank took his jacket and tie off. Mike headed to the wet bar and broke the seal on it. “I need a drink.”

  While Mike made himself a drink, Vince turned to Frank. “You didn’t find her.”

  “We didn’t find her,” Frank said. Aside from the look of frustration on Frank’s mug, there was also a look of worry. “But we found stuff out. Boy, did we find shit out.”

  Mike took a sip of his drink—Jim Beam straight—then sat down at the desk. “Where to start?”

  “The beginning,” Vince said. “You went straight to Nino’s right?”

  “We went to Nino’s,” Mike said, nodding. “There were a couple of kids there. Frank and I identified ourselves as FBI agents. It was easy, considering what happened there today. Everybody in town had already heard about what happened at the Family Cupboard.”

  “I bet,” Vince said. He was beginning to yearn for a drink himself. He could make out the distinctive label of a Rolling Rock beer in the refrigerator.

  “We asked them where we could locate Mary Ann, and one of the kids directed us to her friend Jackie. They gave us Jackie’s address. We went over there and Jackie proved to be very cooperative. She told us that Mary Ann was gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “She split,” Frank said. He took his shirt off and looked at Mike. “If you don’t mind, I’m taking these off. I never was used to wearing this suit and tie shit.”

  Mike nodded and Frank stripped down to his underwear and began rummaging in his overnight bag. Vince turned to Mike. “So Mary Ann skipped town, too?”

  Mike nodded, sipping his drink. “Jackie said Mary Ann called her this morning from a bus stop in North Carolina. She said that she was afraid of those guys coming back to Lititz to finish what they started.”