The White Lily

by Susanne Matthews

  “Jacob, why don’t you continue telling us more about what it was like growing up in the commune?” Tom asked. “Since we’re all here, you won’t have to repeat yourself.”

  “It was probably a lot like growing up on a farm in the sixties, I guess. We all did chores. We fed the chickens and pigs and mucked out the barn. The manure was used as fertilizer—organic agriculture before it even got popular. We were eight, six kids and Mom and Dad, nine if you counted Grandpa, but he didn’t live with us. My grandmother passed on before I was born. My mother had a big vegetable garden, as did the other women, and it was the children’s responsibility to keep them watered and weeded. I’ll never forget the look on Dad’s face when Eloise pulled up half a row of corn plants thinking it was grass. She was just four and wanted to help. I thought she was in for it, but Dad just sighed, shook his head, and replanted the row. He never stayed angry with her, no matter what she did.”

  Jacob turned his head to look at Lilith, making her squirm.

  “He never held a grudge either.” He reached for his beer.

  She lifted her glass, acknowledged his dig, and took a mouthful. Did she hold grudges? She didn’t think so, but she could be stubborn—pigheaded, as her dad would say. She’d make peace with Jacob tomorrow since it looked as if he’d be underfoot for a while, but for tonight, let him think about it. He was still keeping secrets from her, and she didn’t like it.

  But you have secrets, too, her conscience prodded.

  “The women collected the eggs and milked the cows manually, as well as taking care of the house, meals, and laundry. The men worked the fields and looked after the stock.

  “When the chores were done, I played ball with my friends or went fishing with my dad, my grandfather, and my brothers. Neither Jimmy nor I liked hunting, but it was a way to put meat on the table. I went to school on the commune, to church in town when my mother dragged me. If I got lucky, I got to go to the drive-in and see a movie once in a while. We didn’t have television, but we had radios. My grandfather used to tell us stories about what happened in Vietnam. Even though the draft ended before I was born, some of the young guys joined the forces, but by the time I was ten, that stopped. Boys went away to school, while the girls finished their education and became housewives and mothers. A couple of my cousins went to nursing school.”

  “Talk about male chauvinism,” Lilith said.

  “It does sound that way by today’s standards, but I don’t think my mother ever felt dominated.”

  Spoken like a man. That was the way the FFOW had treated women, too. What was the line? Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.

  As Jacob continued talking about his youth, Lilith got the impression his early years had been happy ones, filled with love and understanding. He’d cared deeply for his parents and grandpa. Well, he was alone in the world now, and whose fault was that?

  “... Grandpa learned the hard way never to turn his back on an angry mule. Let’s face it, he’d have loved living in the Wild West, moving his cattle from Texas up to Colorado and sleeping under the stars with his friends.” Jacob sobered. “He’d be ashamed of how that commune has changed.”

  “I’m sure he would,” Trevor said. “I saw his service record. He was a hero, but like a lot of the men who served in Vietnam, he wasn’t treated as such.”

  “When I was five or six, Grandpa took a trip with some of the elders. I asked Dad where they’d gone. He said they were paying their respects, but when he got back, Grandpa just said they’d gone to spend time with old friends. I think they visited the memorial, but no matter how often I asked about his trip, that’s all he ever said.”

  When the food arrived, the conversation changed and became general. They’d just finished dessert, black and white pie made with cookies formerly hawked by the hockey legend, and were enjoying coffee when Trevor dropped the first bombshell.

  “How prevalent was drug use on the commune?”

  Jacob chuckled and put down his mug. “My grandfather and his friends were quite fond of their ‘medicinal weed’ as he called it. My dad wasn’t a toker, but a lot of the other adults were. If there were any harder drugs used, I wasn’t aware of it. Why?”

  “Based on what happened to Faye Lewis Halliday, someone in the cult has an extensive understanding of pharmacology, specifically scopolamine and other sedatives, as well as poisons.”

  Jacob shook his head. “One of my brothers was trained to be a veterinarian, so I suppose he’d have some knowledge. Others could’ve studied pharmacology. I’ve heard of scopolamine, but I’m sure there was nothing like that at the time I was there.”

  “Possibly. The toxicological results have all come back on the dead cult members, and it was one of the drugs found in the brain tissue.”

  “You didn’t tell me the tox screens were back,” Lilith said.

  “We got them earlier, before you found out about Jacob’s uncle,” Rob said. “I was going to tell you about them, but then you got angry, and honestly, Lilith, until Trevor mentioned them now, I forgot they’d come in.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, mollified. “We’ve all got a lot on our minds these days. Knowing those people had scopolamine in their systems might explain a lot.” It would certainly make it easier to understand how Jacob’s friend had gone from horse whisperer to killer.

  • • •

  Jacob frowned, not quite sure he understood exactly what those test results meant. “Are you saying my uncle drugged everyone? Is that why they believe him? Why they did what he told them to do?”

  “Using drugs to control cult members is nothing new,” Lilith answered, “but it isn’t the primary way a cult leader manipulates his followers. He uses charisma and builds on their insecurities, convincing them he’s the answer.”

  “You mentioned that while your uncle was away, there was a shortage of supplies, and then when he was there, it was the opposite,” Tom added.

  “That would work,” Lilith said. “Feast and famine, pain and reward are standard techniques for indoctrination, as is isolation. When people are in flux, not sure what they believe, some drugs can disable their conscious understanding of right and wrong, making them compliant, but passivity doesn’t denote consent.”

  “So you’re saying these drugs can take away a man’s will?” Jacob asked, needing to be sure he understood. If that were the case, it would be easier to accept the way New Horizon had changed so dramatically.

  “Scopolamine can for sure, and to make matters worse, it prevents a memory of the event from forming. People do things they wouldn’t normally do and don’t know they’ve done it.”

  “Did you ever see anyone using peyote or mescaline?” Rob asked.

  “I can’t say for sure, but I do know there were men who collected parts of the Agave cacti and fermented alcohol from them, but I thought they were making tequila. As kids, we were warned to stay away from the spineless, globe-shaped cacti because they were poisonous.”

  “Would the adults have consumed this liquor before attending one of your uncle’s services?” Lilith asked.

  “Maybe,” he answered, trying to remember as many details as he could. He hadn’t had much use for his uncle and his teachings. “Duncan only started having services after the epidemic, so I was there less than two years, but those things were only for adults. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone drunk, but after the sessions were over, I’d hear them whispering about what they’d seen or heard. Kids up to eighteen attended something a lot like the Sunday school I’d attended in town. Three months before I left, my uncle started having meetings once a week, but these were only for the men, so I assumed they were about the horse breeding.”

  Trevor nodded. “It’s hard for you to comment on what happened when you weren’t there, but that could’ve been the beginning of his indoctrination process. The tox screens we ordered for the prisoners revealed traces of mescaline in the blood samples taken the night we raided the compound. It took a while to get the results because
that wasn’t considered a priority, and we’d given them some drugs of our own. We had to sedate the whole damn bunch of them to get in and rescue the women without having to go in with guns blazing.”

  “Then how did my brother and Seth get shot?” Had Lilith lied to him? “I understood that happened in that rescue attempt.”

  “Sharpshooters took out the armed guards on the roof. Your brother and Seth, as well as the other two men you saw, were armed with assault rifles. It would’ve been suicide to attempt a rescue with those men shooting at us,” Rob answered. “The last thing we wanted to do was get any of the hostages killed. We had the neonatal specialist at Mount Auburn—that’s the hospital associated with Harvard—help us select and prepare a drug that would sedate everyone without being dangerous to the women and children. We used smoke grenade guns to fire the canisters into the buildings. When I saw Faye in that stall, I was the happiest man alive. We moved all of the people to a safe location, but one of the women cult members came to sooner than we expected and used a suicide pill before we could stop her. That’s the reason we checked your teeth. Anyway, we didn’t want anyone else offing themselves, so we got permission to give them another dose until we could check them all.”

  “I understand,” Jacob said. “You did what you had to. Sometimes you have to treat the innocent as if they were guilty for their own protection as well as yours.” How many times had he been hard on someone who wouldn’t cooperate in an investigation? He hadn’t crossed the line, but like Rob, he’d come damn close.

  “After reading Faye’s account of her captivity, I can assure you, none of those people are innocent,” Lilith said with more venom in her voice than he would’ve expected.

  “This is where things get interesting,” Trevor continued. “We’ve kept them on suicide watch, so they’re constantly monitored. The guards have reported behavioral changes in the prisoners since they’ve been there. At first, they were nervous and restless, and we put it down to the aftereffects of the drugs. Having finally received this information, I don’t think the sedatives had anything to do with it. We used Rob’s wife’s behavior as a measuring stick since she’d been given the same sedative, if not the second dose. They had trouble sleeping, and so did she, but her nightmares had started long before that. Their appetites were poor, but not Faye’s. We actually had to force-feed a few of them because we thought they might be trying to starve themselves to death. Eventually, they started eating of their own accord. While the restlessness and anxiety have decreased, we’re seeing more belligerence that seems to be giving way to bouts of depression. The prison psychologist compared their behavior to that of patients in rehab, trying to give up an addiction cold turkey.”

  “So, you’re saying my uncle has been feeding them this mescaline and maybe scopolamine so they’d buy what he was saying, what he was telling them to do, and then forget they’d done it? Was there any of that in the rescued women’s bloodstreams? I assume you checked them as well. Mescal is poison.”

  “There was no mescal in the women’s blood, just traces of the scopolamine they’d been given. Those results came back within a couple of weeks since they were high priority. I know how terrible it sounds, but drugging them makes sense,” Lilith said. “They’d have been more open to doing as they were told, and they wouldn’t question him. Those who did would probably meet with an accident. Some people are more susceptible to the drug than others. Depending on the dosage, the mescaline would give them a sense of euphoria, and if he combined it with some kind of ritual, they might well believe any hallucinations they had were divine. As far as the dead women go, he could have given the women scopolamine and ordered them to clean the body. The next day, they wouldn’t remember doing it.”

  “That’s even worse than what I’d suspected.” A faint glimmer of hope filled Jacob. “Do you think James was under the influence of scopolamine, too?

  “I’m sorry,” Trevor said. “I know what you’re hoping for, but we didn’t find any scopolamine in his system. We did find significant levels of both tetrahydrocannabinol, more commonly referred to as THC, the drug found in marijuana, and mescaline.”

  God, please let the amounts be high enough to explain why he behaved the way he did.

  “Significant enough to impair his judgment?”

  “That’s a difficult question,” Lilith said. “If you’re talking about the THC, with the current pressure to legalize marijuana, there’ve been a lot of arguments back and forth on the topic. The stronger the THC in the joint, the more likely it’ll affect coordination, concentration, and memory as well as the way information is processed So, if he smoked up, like your grandpa and his friends did, no, it would likely not impair his judgment. But mix that with mescaline, which is a strong psychedelic drug that leads to hallucinations and altered perceptions, then he would most definitely be impaired.”

  “Then it’s possible James might not have realized what he was doing was wrong?” He knew he was grasping at straws, but if there was a chance James wasn’t a fiend, then Jacob needed to hang on to it. If his twin had been changed by the drugs, it would mean he wouldn’t be harboring a monster in his own soul.

  “Theoretically, yes,” said Lilith, “but I want you to think about this, too. You told me James changed after the fever—you mentioned that he was moody, demanding, and short-tempered. After we talked yesterday, I looked up dengue hemorrhagic fever because I’d never heard of it. In rare cases, it can lead to residual brain damage, which most often affects the frontal lobe. There’d have to be a thorough brain examination to be sure. If you add the brain injury to the drugs, it actually makes sense.”

  Jacob smiled. “Thank you.” He might not have loved and understood James, but if he could somehow vindicate him, then perhaps, in time, he could learn to forgive him.

  Chapter Ten

  “Thanks for picking me up, Rob,” Jacob said, getting into the blue sedan and doing up his seat belt. “I should rent a car, but I’m not used to driving on this side and I’d probably end up in a bingle.”

  “A what?” Rob pulled away from the curb.

  “Sorry, a car accident. I try not to use too many expressions from home, but I’m tired this morning. I spent a lot of time thinking about my brother and the rest of the people my uncle has abused. Agent Munroe said that drugs weren’t the principal means of control, so some of them had to participate in cult activities and those murders voluntarily. I just wish I knew what category James and Eloise fell into.”

  “I don’t want to make excuses, but if your sister cooperated, I’m sure she did it out of fear and survival instincts. I’ve talked to Faye about a lot of this, and believe me, I’ve seen how crippling fear can be. I’ve watched her wrestle with it, and there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t struggle with it myself, terrified the bastard will come for her again like he did when I left her before. I’ve been seeing the department shrink to deal with it, but after what Lilith and I saw at the Winchesters’, it’s worse than ever.”

  Rob concentrated on the heavy morning traffic, and as much as Jacob wanted to ask him more about Faye and her time with the cult, he’d wait to read the file for himself.

  They’d left the pub shortly after the discussion on drugs. The place had started to fill up with the early after-work crowd, and he was emotionally drained. He’d paid the bill and walked back to headquarters with Trevor. He’d hoped to talk to Lilith, try to make peace with her, because even though she’d offered him a possible explanation for James’s behavior, she been standoffish. He’d wanted to ask if she’d considered his apology long enough to accept it.

  Trevor had driven him back to the hotel and promised to let him look at the full Harvester file this morning. Jacob had asked about Lilith, but Trevor had simply said she was an expert on cults, and anything else he’d like to know, he should ask her directly. He admired a man who didn’t gossip.

  Rob pulled into the underground parking lot and parked the car next to a white hatchback.

&nbs
p; “Looks like the gang’s all here,” he said. “I’m waiting on those name searches. They should be in by now. All we need is one address to get started. And if I have any time left in the day, Amos has a floater for me, too.”

  When the elevator doors opened, Lilith was standing in front of the whiteboard.

  “Morning, Munroe,” Rob said as he removed his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair. “What are you doing?”

  “Hi. Making space for new information. Now that you’re here, Trevor wants to see us all in Room Two. He’s there now.”

  “Good morning, Agent Munroe. Where should I go?” Jacob asked.

  “I just told you,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Room Two. Trevor wants us all in there by 8:30 am. That gives you five minutes to go powder your nose. And it’s Munroe or Lilith, Jacob. We’re on the same team here.”

  She turned back to the board.

  Rob burst out laughing. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Play nice, children.”

  “Hey, Rob,” Lilith called when he was partway out of the room.

  “What?”

  “Get me one, too. Black.”

  “And the magic word is?”

  “Please?” she said, promptly sticking her tongue out at him.

  “Now, now, I’m just trying to teach you manners. Do you want something?” he asked Jacob.

  “Sure.”

  “How do you take it?”

  “Cream, three sugars.”

  “Like things sweet, do you? Creamer all right?”

  “That’s fine.”

  Lilith chuckled. “Your dentist must love you.” She turned and pinned the last photograph to the board. “Let’s go.”

  This playful Lilith was a far cry from the angry, standoffish woman she’d been yesterday. It added another layer to her complexity, making her even more intriguing than she’d been before. “You must have incredible balance,” he said, watching her walk ahead of him. The heels on her tangerine shoes had to be five inches high.