by Ethan Cross
“It’s not as simple as all that.”
“Yes, it is. Either you do or you don’t.”
“It doesn’t matter either way. You just don’t understand that. What did you think would happen? That we’d get married, have kids, and bring them along on cases? There was a time when all that I wanted was to be normal. Settle down with you and start a family. But I can’t do that, because I’m not normal. I’m just as broken as the men we hunt.”
“I can’t quit the Shepherd Organization, if that’s what you want,” she said.
“I don’t know what I want. But I know now that I can’t run from what I am.”
A long, cold silence accompanied them down Route 12 past houses and businesses and bare trees. They were all vague shapes at the dark edges of the headlights’ beam. The snowfall had tapered off as they drove, and the snowplows were out in force. They had already seen three of them along the way. But Marcus had heard that the worst of the storm was still on its way.
Day Six – December 20 Morning
82
They drove in silence until they reached the northernmost edge of Jefferson County, but Stan still hadn’t called back with the information they needed. Marcus decided to fill up the Yukon, and if Stan hadn’t called by the time they pulled from the pump, he’d make a call of his own.
He pulled the Yukon up to the third pump of four at a small red and white Citgo station with a separate car wash in back. He hadn’t caught the name of the town, but the gas station appeared to be the hub of village commerce.
Stamping his feet and blowing on his hands to combat the chill in the air, he watched the numbers on the pump tick past the sixty-dollar mark. Then his phone rang.
“What did you find, Stan? We’re flying blind up here.”
“Okay, I’ve learned quite a bit about our new friend Conlan. Full name Anthony Mason Conlan.”
“Wait. His first name is Anthony?”
“Does that mean something to you?”
“Yeah, it does. It means that Vasques’s dad has been a step ahead of us this whole time. After he died, she found a note on his desk that referred to Anthony C. He must have been onto something.”
“If he knew about Conlan, then he definitely was. This dude is an A-number-1 nutball. When he was a boy, a doctor tried to diagnose him with a mild form of schizophrenia, but Conlan’s rich daddy wouldn’t hear of it. So the kid grows up and joins the military. He became a lieutenant in the army and volunteered for some experiments conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was codenamed Project Kaleidoscope. They were dosing the grunts with LSD, synthetic marijuana, and two dozen other psychoactive drugs. All to develop chemical weapons that could incapacitate enemy soldiers. Very illegal.”
Marcus said, “Sounds a lot like the MK-ULTRA project the CIA had going.”
“Yeah, right along the same lines. But in 1981, a study was conducted that claimed the participants of the experiments suffered no long-term effects. Conlan wasn’t involved in the study because he had dropped off the grid by then.”
“There has to be more to it than that.”
“I’m getting there, boss. You gotta let me roll it all out for you nice and sweet. So, anyway, I dug deeper into the actual classified journals of the head researcher. A dude by the name of Dr. Ted Uhrig. And Dr. Teddy had a lot to say about our man Conlan. Apparently, during the experiments, the nutball freaked out and claimed to have been receiving messages from the devil himself. So fast forward a few years, and Conlan had started his first cult at his father’s plantation in Georgia. Then daddy kicks the bucket—under suspicious circumstances—and leaves a small fortune to his only son who has now started to go by the name of The Prophet.”
A man in a beat-up Chevy truck pulled up behind Marcus at the pump and honked his horn. Marcus replied with a form of sign language that he had learned at a young age back in Brooklyn. It involved liberal use of the middle finger.
“Where’s Conlan now?” he said into the phone.
“Completely off the grid. If he’s alive, then he must be using a false identity.”
“Okay, keep looking. What about the location of the compound?”
“I found several landowners named Bowman or Beaman in Jefferson County, but I cross-referenced topography and the time period. Came up with one old guy named Otis. Which sounds like a dog’s name to me, or maybe a cow’s, but I suppose it was probably more common back in the day. Anyway, you got lucky. The old man still lives there. I’m texting you the address and directions.”
83
Marcus had to guess at where Otis Beaman’s drive actually ran. It was just an old dirt lane that had been completely covered over with snow. Luckily, the Yukon was a powerful four-wheel drive and could push through just about anything. The farm itself sat on a hundred and twenty acres nestled back in the trees. They passed a few fields that probably would have been pregnant with corn during the summer but now sat barren and empty. The lane followed an old fence made from three rows of wooden beams, but the fence had rotted and fallen apart in many sections.
Outbuildings and an old barn and silo dotted the property. The barn’s snow-capped roof was sagging in from the weight. It had once been a grand structure with several lean-tos jutting off from its sides. It had probably started off red but now it was the color of dark soil and old rust. The house itself was built in a modest Cape Cod style—one and a half stories with a steep pitched roof and end gables. It had been added onto a few times throughout the years, but now the old white siding was crumbling and nearly stripped of paint. Rusty machinery and implements littered the grounds, and an old orange International Harvester Scout truck sat in the driveway. It was a small and boxy type of vehicle that Marcus couldn’t recall ever seeing out on the road.
They plowed their way up through the driveway and stepped out into the snow. It came up to Marcus’s shins and fell over the top of his tennis shoes and jeans. The air was sweet and pure but also freezing. The snowfall had stopped but the temperature had fallen as they’d traveled farther north.
The sun was still young in the sky, but farmers were usually early to bed and early to rise. And Marcus didn’t really care if they woke the old man or not. The doorbell didn’t work, but a moment’s worth of banging brought Otis Beaman to the door. His face was thin and wrinkled. He had wispy gray hair and a Wilford Brimley mustache. But he was also tall, and he struck Marcus as a guy who had once been formidable even if he had been ravaged by the years.
“Otis Beaman?”
“Yes.” Beaman’s voice was quiet, but gravelly.
Marcus flashed an FBI badge, since people often responded better to those credentials. The Bureau was a well-known law-enforcement body. When he flashed his DOJ creds, people thought he was there to collect back taxes or something equally absurd, and explaining took unnecessary time. “We’re here to ask you a few questions about a man named Anthony Conlan.”
A strange look passed over the old man’s lined face. Shame? Sadness? With a nod, Beaman seemed to come to a decision. “Come on in.”
Everything in the house seemed old and worn. The brown patterned carpet was thin and well-used. A dusty upright piano sat in a corner beneath family photos, some of them black and white. There was a curio cabinet filled with knick-knacks and antiques and a nineteen-inch console television along one wall facing a couch. The couch had a floral patten, but the design had been worn off the center cushion.
Beaman pulled in a white high-backed vinyl chair from the kitchen table and directed them to sit on the couch. “I’m surprised it took so long for someone to come asking about Conlan. I expected you years ago. I’ve thought many times about what I would say.”
“Why don’t you just start at the beginning, Mr. Beaman?”
“You have to understand that at the time the bank was preparing to foreclose on my farm. It was a tough year, and I had three kids and a wife to think of. When Conlan first came to me, I thought my prayers had been answered, that God had provided m
e with the means to save my farm. But now I know that it was a test. Matthew 16:26: ‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’”
Beaman fell silent, his eyes distant. Marcus said, “What did Conlan want?”
“He said that he wanted the use of a remote piece of land on my property. Said that he was the leader of a small religious group that wanted to avoid persecution for their beliefs. He offered me a fat load of money to allow them to build some kind of bunker up there and keep it quiet. I asked around a bit, and he had approached others in the area as well. Some of them were considering it.”
“So you agreed?”
“That land was good for nothing to me. Just timber. I prayed about it for two days, and I had the distinct feeling that God was telling me to turn him down. But I didn’t listen. The letters from the bank kept coming and telling me something different. I didn’t like it. Guy seemed off to me. But I had my pride and a family to consider. So I agreed, took the money. Sold my soul to the devil for a damn farm.”
“What were they doing up there?”
“I don’t know. It was part of the deal that I never tell anyone about it or meddle in their business. They built their bunker and lived out there for over two years. Never heard a peep from them. No problems at all. They had one big fellow with crooked teeth who was the only one that ever left the woods. He would go into town and get supplies. I think he was driving around the whole day, buying small amounts from several different grocery stores so that it wouldn’t seem suspicious. Then one day his old van pulled out, and he had others with him. I was out doing chores, and I saw Conlan’s face in the passenger seat. Didn’t think much of it. None of my business. But they never came back.”
Tears formed in Beaman’s eyes, and his gaze fell to the brown patterned carpet. Maggie said, “Did you ever go out to the compound?”
Beaman nodded. “I knew that they couldn’t have all their people in that van. I didn’t know how many were out there, but I knew there were families. Eventually, I went to check.”
The old man went silent, but neither of them prodded him to continue. After a moment, he spoke in a quivering voice. “I’ll never forget that smell. I’m a farmer. I been around death plenty of times, but this was different. This was evil. And I knew that I had damned myself. All for Conlan’s fat load of money. I sealed up the entrance and never looked back. Even told my wife that I didn’t find anything.”
Beaman covered his face with the gnarled old hands of a farmer.
Marcus leaned forward and placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Whatever happened out there would have just happened somewhere else. You made a mistake, but this is your chance to set it right.”
Beaman met his gaze, and Marcus added, “We need to see that compound.”
84
After nearly an hour of searching for the correct spot and tromping through the snow in boots borrowed from the old man, they finally found the bunker’s entrance. Beaman had brought along a shovel, and Marcus dug the entrance clear of snow and dirt. The rusted metal doors were only a few feet beneath the surface. It reminded Marcus of the door to a cellar, except that in this case there was no house above it.
Marcus looked around the area. It sat on a slight hill, but there were no outward signs of the bunker. “I don’t see any intake or exhaust pipes.”
“I cut those off and filled them in,” Beaman replied.
“That means the air might not be very good and there’s nowhere for our carbon dioxide to go. We’ll leave the doors open and only stay down a few minutes. But if you start feeling strange or light-headed, we get out immediately.”
Maggie and Beaman nodded.
Using the end of the shovel, Marcus pried open the doors. He expected to find a set of stairs but instead there was an old metal ladder bolted into the concrete blocks. The shaft was as wide as the cellar doors and descended into darkness. The ladder did make more sense; stairs would have taken up a lot of space. He shone the Maglite down into the hole. The floor looked stable enough.
“I’ll go first.”
Marcus stepped down onto the first rung of the ladder and tested its strength. It seemed sturdy, so he began his descent. Along the way, he noticed that the bunker’s top seemed to be constructed of wooden support beams topped with corrugated metal. He reached the bottom and tested the wooden floor. It was made from thick sheets of plywood, but no carpet or other material covered it. There were only a few rugs and blankets scattered about. The plywood creaked under his weight but gave no indication that it would cave in.
“Come on down.”
As the sound of feet on the metal rungs echoed off the bunker’s walls, Marcus examined the space. The right wall was constructed from gray concrete blocks. A blackboard hung from it. There was a large circular rug sitting in front of a stool near the blackboard. A schoolroom? The wall at his back that held the ladder was also made from concrete blocks, but the walls on the left and at the back of the room were interior partitions covered by dark wood-grain paneling. Marcus guessed that the room was fifteen feet wide and thirty long. The back half contained old particle-board folding tables, chairs, and bookshelves. Some of the tables still had cups and plates and opened books on them. The air was stale and musty.
Maggie’s flashlight beam danced around the space, revealing the same sights. She said, “I bet they used plans for an old fallout shelter and just expanded the dimensions.”
“Could be. They could also have skimped on some of the materials from bomb-shelter plans, since their goal really wasn’t to survive a nuclear blast.”
Three cheap hollow-core doors lined the left-hand wall. Marcus walked over, pulled open one of the doors, and shone his light around the room on the other side. He supposed it was a bedroom, but the bare utilitarian space reminded him more of a monastic cell. He stepped inside. There was a triangular-shaped piece of wood that acted as a desk mounted in the left corner. A gray folding chair sat in front of it. The right wall contained a home-made set of bunk beds. There were several sets of deteriorated clothing stacked in one corner. The neutral-colored garments looked similar to prison jumpsuits.
From the doorway, Maggie said, “Could you imagine living like this?”
“I’ve seen worse,” he replied, thinking of the tapes of Ackerman as a boy. He stepped back into the first room. “I’m going to see what’s behind that door on the end. You check these other two bedrooms.”
Marcus moved across the room, past the makeshift classroom, past the tables and chairs and bookshelves. He shone his flashlight on the spines of a few of the books. He saw names that he recognized from his research on the case—Anton LaVey, the iconic founder of the Church of Satan, and Aleister Crowley—and then other names he recognized, such as Ayn Rand.
The door on the end, like the ones for the bedrooms, had no lock. He moved inside and found what appeared to be some type of communal dining area. This room was darker than the previous one, since there was no ambient light coming through the opened cellar doors. There was a wood-burning stove connected to a pipe that led up into the ceiling and an old-time icebox in the corner. Shelves filled with canned goods and jars covered the back wall. There was enough food there to feed several people for at least a couple of months. More doors lined the left wall as they had in the first room. Marcus made a cursory search of each, but they were all the same and filled with nothing but the bare essentials for human existence. The only anomaly was that the back wall of the last bedroom had bulged inward and dirt had seeped in, probably from the intrusion of a tree’s root system.
Returning to the first room, he asked Maggie, “Did you find anything?”
“Just this. It was on one of the desks in the corner.” She held out a stack of old dot-matrix printer paper, the kind that had perforated edges and rolled from the printer in a long interconnected strip.
He shone the light onto the pages and read a few lines. It seemed to be some type of satanic manifesto. It describe
d the world with terms like The Father, The Slaves, The Disciples, The Work, The Great Fire, and The Chosen. Marcus had done some basic research on cults and had found that most of them developed their own special vocabularies and terms. Controlling words and encouraging black-and-white thinking helped the leaders to control the thoughts of the members.
Quickly flipping through the pages, he also found mention of ceremonies like those from the Anarchist crime scenes.
He shone his light around the space again, knowing that there had to be more to the compound than this. And then he saw it in the corner.
There was another hole, covered by a trapdoor, near where they had climbed down. The trapdoor had a small brass handle screwed to one edge. Marcus pulled it open and found a ladder that descended to a second underground story.
Shining his flashlight up into the faces of the others, he said, “Let’s see how deep this rabbit hole goes.”
85
There was something different about the bunker’s second level. Marcus tried to tell himself that it was merely psychological. It just felt darker because they were farther from the cellar doors. It just felt colder because they were moving farther away from the sun. In reality, the temperature at this depth should have been a fairly consistent fifty-two degrees, and for all practical purposes, darkness was the same whether you were in your own bedroom with the lights off or at the bottom of the ocean. It was all in his head, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that in this place the cold penetrated deeper and the darkness was somehow thicker.
The room was the same size as the one above, but it felt more like the sanctuary of a church, with chairs organized to face a central speaker. Strange symbols similar to those from the crime scenes covered the walls and floors. It was definitely a place of worship. The left-hand wall here only contained one door, and this one looked sturdier than the others. Marcus shone his light on the door’s knob and found the hole for a key. This door, unlike the others, had a lock.