Black Fall

by Andrew Mayne

  Sheriff Boyer crosses his arms and leans on the hood, clearly having done more than just stick a toe in the dirt.

  “We’ve been out here with metal detectors, rakes, you name it.”

  “And?” Nadine asks as she kneels down and lets some earth slip through her gloved fingers.

  “Nothing. Barely even a cinder block,” he replies.

  Deputy Cranston walks over to a metal sign and leans down to dust it off. “My mother-in-law found this.”

  welcome to moffat, population 58

  “This is all that’s left, other than the road.”

  I scrutinize the sign, trying to figure out why it was left behind. It was pulled from the post—and whoever or whatever happened here left it as a calling card. They want us to know there was a town here. It’s a little theatrical for my tastes, and suspicious.

  “So, you think these folks might be your folks?” asks Boyer.

  I stare out to the horizon, searching the brown rocks and pale green brush for something, anything.

  “Maybe. One of the men who tried to kill me was from here. We’ve also traced a bunch of fake IDs to this area. These people had to come from somewhere. I guess Moffat makes as much sense as anywhere else.”

  Cranston abandons the sign to stare into nothing, like me. “So they just took over the town?” He’s an intelligent man trying to make sense of madness.

  “It happens. You get a cult group moving in and the balance begins to shift. After Ezra Winter went to jail, the rest of them probably wanted a place to hide out. Of course, there weren’t that many members back then. The people here, they’d mostly be the second generation. New converts. Children of the originals.”

  Cranston glances over at Nadine. “You said they were recruiting?”

  “On campuses,” she replies. “We know that’s how they got to at least one of our suspects. Cults are known for preying on marginalized young people, who are especially vulnerable if they’re isolated from their families and having trouble fitting in.”

  “Recruiting for what?” asks Boyer.

  “All this anarchy,” I explain. “That was their plan. Or at least part of it. Starting riots, the blackouts, trying to make us all panic.”

  I sense Boyer is having trouble understanding what the Red Chain is about. I can’t blame him. “Yeah, but then what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s why we came here.”

  “I’ve got some aerial photos,” Cranston says. Tired of looking at nothing, he takes a tube from the back of the SUV and slides out several large prints onto the hood.

  From above, Moffat—at least the Moffat that used to be here—is a collection of rectangles around a small open center. It’s a blown-up, higher-resolution version of what you’d see on Google Maps. There are several dozen concrete buildings, at least three dozen prefab homes, and other similar structures.

  I trace my finger across the town. “Some of these buildings had to have foundations.”

  “We looked,” Boyer replies. “Ripped up, disappeared, or pulled into a black hole. It’s like the town never existed. We even asked a physicist at Colorado State if that was possible. He laughed it off, said it was probably a twister. Only, the meteorologists said that was even less likely.”

  “Isn’t it possible they just hauled everything somewhere else?” Nadine asks, looking at me.

  “Yes, it is,” I reply. “But I can’t imagine them doing it that quickly and without leaving behind some evidence.”

  “True. But the million-dollar question is why?”

  “Rapture,” says Cranston with a sigh. “That’s what folks around here are saying. At least some of them, the ones who don’t believe it’s a joke. They think this might be some kind of divine act.”

  I turn to him, curious. “Do they take that stuff seriously out here?”

  “Some more than others. The possibility certainly makes these people more interesting. Folks want to know what they were doing.”

  “Too bad they’re not here to tell us,” replies Nadine.

  “But you can’t just disappear a town!” Cranston protests.

  “Yes, you can,” I murmur to myself as I think it over.

  “What’s that?” Boyer glances up at me as he overhears my not-so-inner monologue.

  “Sorry. I was just thinking. The answer is yes. You can vanish a town. This was done a lot in World War II, to hide cities and other strategic locations from bombers. There was a Lockheed factory in Burbank they covered with netting and tents so it would look like farms and houses from the air. The British used lights to create false cities on the coast. Of course, all of this was designed to fool people from the air, not the ground.”

  Cranston dismisses the theory with a shake of his head. “We can’t even find a septic tank.”

  “So, is this an FBI case now?” asks Boyer, who clearly wants our help.

  “Well, the post office isn’t here. That makes it a federal case. So I guess, yes. The trouble is with everything else going to hell, I don’t know how much help we can get for you.” I nod to Nadine. “I was barely able to get her assigned here. My colleagues are back in Virginia taking apart a seventies-era computer in search of more clues.”

  “I could care less about jurisdiction and who gets credit,” says Boyer. “I just want to know what happened to the people here. Maybe they’re your Red Chain, but some of them were children. Tell me what you need and I’ll see what I can do.”

  He’s looking to Nadine and me for answers, but we don’t have any. There should be a whole FBI forensics team out here as well as field agents. But all the ones in Colorado are tied up, and there’s no way Quantico can spare the resources while state capitals are under siege from every crackpot group we’ve ever encountered.

  I’ve just got to make do with what we have available here. “You have an RV we could use? I’d like to be able to spend some time out here without having to traipse back and forth to town.”

  “You got it,” says Boyer. “I’ll even stock it up. Anything else?”

  “Horses,” replies Nadine.

  “Horses?” I ask.

  “To cover the ground,” she explains. “We’ll be able to do a better search that way.”

  “Good idea.” Although I haven’t been on one in years. Ugh.

  “My brother and his wife have some,” offers Cranston. “I’ll get them trailered and bring them out here.”

  “Thank you,” I reply, appreciating his eagerness to help. “I’ll be honest, though. I don’t know what we could find that you couldn’t.”

  Nadine glances over my shoulder, toward the horizon. “Sheriff, are you expecting company?”

  “No. Why?” he asks as he turns around.

  We all squint to see what Nadine is staring at. A long plume of dust is coming from the road that leads off the highway. We passed nobody on the way here, and it seems odd that there would be traffic now.

  “Hold on a second.” Boyer reaches for a pair of binoculars on his center console and rests his elbows on the hood. After a moment, he mutters, “Jesus Christ.”

  “What is it?” I ask, holding my hand out for the binoculars.

  He hands them to me without saying anything. I adjust the focus knob and the head of the plume comes into view.

  Crap.

  “Well?” says Nadine.

  I give them to her. “It looks like Moffat isn’t a minor story anymore.”

  “Seriously!” she exclaims. “I count at least three news trucks. Two local and one from Fox.”

  “Perfect,” I groan. Just what we need.

  When the first van comes to a stop and the reporter comes running toward me with his cameraman right behind him, I’m not even remotely prepared for the first question that comes out of his mouth.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The Pattern

  The reporter’s name is Quint Trenton. I’ve seen him on cable news before, chasing after the latest scandal. With jet-black hair and a touch of “trust-me” gray at his t
emples, he’s the kind of guy who reports on a hurricane while pseudo-bravely standing in knee-deep water, or who shoves his microphone into shocked refugees’ faces to ask them how they feel about their lives suddenly falling apart.

  He’s no better or worse than any other TV journalist I guess. I’ve done my best to stay clear of them. Having your face on the news doesn’t help if you’re a career FBI agent who still wants to do undercover work. Plus, I know they’ll twist whatever they can into a story, even if it’s not quite the whole truth. Maybe I’m biased, but after the press gives you a nickname like FBI Witch you tend not to think too positively about any branch of the media. While I’ve never had a bad interaction with Trenton, he’s here right now—the last place I need to deal with someone like him, or the other two that came in the convoy.

  But it’s not his presence itself that grates on me the most. It’s the question he just asked me. It stings. It burns.

  “Agent Blackwood!” He shouts, his cameraman lumbering behind him. “Are you here in connection with the Warlock case?”

  I turn away and pretend to focus on the aerial image while I wait for Boyer and Cranston to get the journalists to back the hell away. When I spot cameras aimed at me, I sit down in the passenger seat of the SUV, facing away from the gathered news crews.

  Nadine walks over and rests a hand on top of the open door, shielding me.

  “Those assholes.” She’s pretty stingy with her expletives, so I can tell she’s just as miffed as I am, maybe more. “Bringing up Heywood, sheesh.” She rolls her eyes.

  “Dumb,” I reply.

  Or is it?

  Something that’s been lurking in the back of my mind finally breaks free. I consider myself a great critical thinker, but I’ve been blind.

  So damn blind.

  “Why the hell would they come out here now? Boyer said they couldn’t be bothered to care before. What gives?” asks Nadine, trying to sympathize.

  I take my phone out and load a map of the United States into a drawing app. “I’m so stupid and stubborn,” I mutter to myself.

  “What do you mean?”

  I nod in the direction of the news crew behind us. “Somebody must have heard I was coming here. They made the connection, but we should have seen it first.”

  “What connection?” she asks. “You mean to the Warlock?”

  Hearing her say it is like a knife twisting in my side. Well, another knife. I take a deep breath as the reality sinks in.

  “Yes. The Warlock’s three crime scenes formed part of a pattern. That cemetery in Michigan, New York City, and Fort Lauderdale. Remember we picked him up at a fourth location in South Texas, where he was about to abduct a girl? We still don’t know why. What we do know is that he was making a geopentagram with the crimes. Each location was a point.” I jab a finger at the ground. “Here, right here. We’re only twenty miles away from the fifth point.”

  Saying it aloud makes me numb. I don’t want there to be a connection. I resisted it.

  Nadine stares at my little map. “It’s got to be a coincidence.”

  “No. It’s not. It explains so much. I wanted to ignore some things about the case that didn’t fit. I was afraid of where they’d lead me. Ezra Winter and his cronies are technophobes, so they must have had help hacking the electrical grid. The Warlock, I mean Heywood, that is his kind of thing. And now this?” I wave a hand toward the empty desert. “A whole fucking town vanishing in some kind of rapture? Tell me that’s not his deal.” My voice is raised, and I have to take a breath to calm down.

  Her mouth slackens before she finds the words. “Are you saying . . . are you saying he’s part of the Red Chain?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he just offered up his services for a few favors . . .” My voice fades at the realization.

  “Like, like trying to kill you?” Nadine replies hesitantly.

  “Yes. None of this made much sense, until now. Ezra Winter was sending mail bombs, but not doing much else. Then suddenly he’s able to pull all of this off while behind bars? What he has, Heywood wants more than anything.”

  “A following,” she replies.

  “Exactly.” Heywood is brilliant, but his people skills aren’t his strong suit.

  Nadine gets out her phone and starts dialing. “I’m calling Heywood’s prison. You call Ailes.”

  I take a moment to calm myself before speaking to Ailes. I don’t want him to pick up on the distress in my voice. This is the last thing I want. I should be off this case and doing paperwork in some forgotten FBI office in North Dakota, not here, not in the middle of another one of his damn stunts.

  “Blackwood? How’s it going out there?” Ailes asks when he picks up.

  “Not good.”

  I spend the next few minutes going over everything we’ve learned so far.

  Nadine mouths “still in jail” after she gets off the phone with the warden.

  At least there’s that. Although it’s only a small consolation given how much he’s been able to orchestrate while allegedly having no computer access. He’s shown us before that he has no problem reaching out to me when he wants to. Now it’s clear he’s been doing something far more elaborate.

  “Well?” asks Nadine after I hang up with Ailes.

  “He’s sending a team in from Quantico and some people from Denver to help us out.”

  “Help us do what?” She gestures to the empty landscape. “We need to have a scene for a crime scene.”

  “Don’t forget about the CCA equipment that was sent here,” I point out. “They wanted it for something. There’s more here.”

  “At least they’re leaving,” says Nadine as the crews start climbing back into their trucks at Boyer’s request.

  After they depart, Boyer walks over to us. “I told them to clear out, with this whole area being a crime scene. We’re going to have to give them something, though.”

  “I know,” I reply.

  This story is going to get big, regardless of what else is going on in the world—and if they make a connection to the riots? Chaos. I don’t have a lot of time to act. There’s so much at stake.

  “Can we get a map showing who owns what parcels of land around here?”

  “You looking for something besides Moffat?” asks Boyer.

  “Maybe.” I look through the driver’s side window at the retreating news vans. “Are we going to have them lurking around all the time?”

  “I think I can get them to keep clear if we throw them a bone. Maybe have the FBI make a statement.”

  I shake my head in protest. “Don’t look at me. I’m not authorized to talk to the press.” That’s not totally accurate, but close enough.

  “I’ll handle that,” offers Nadine. “The talking-to-them part. I just need something to say.”

  “We can tell them this isn’t Moffat,” I suggest.

  “What?” Boyer looks at me like I’ve gone mad. “We can’t exactly lie to them.”

  As terrifying as the thought is that the Warlock has his hand in this, it also clarifies things for me. I know how he thinks. I understand what really happened here.

  All I needed was context.

  The town vanishing is just a prelude. Now that I know who’s pulling the strings, it actually seems like a simple trick. Just a distraction.

  The real show is about to happen.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Ley Lines

  I wait for the news teams to retreat over the horizon, then step out of the SUV and survey the landscape. Right now I can’t obsess over what Heywood is or isn’t up to. I have to stick to the facts and what’s in front of me, or in this case, what’s not.

  “Why do we think Moffat was here?” I ask our small group.

  Boyer cocks an eyebrow, trying to figure out if this is a serious question. The look on my face tells him all he needs to know. “Well, the road, for one reason. This is the road to Moffat.”

  “Okay. You can’t destroy a town overnight. At least not easily, and wit
hout leaving a mess. But you can bury most of one.”

  “Bury one?” He kicks the toe of his boot into the dry ground, sending up a small cloud of dirt that’s carried away by the wind.

  Deputy Cranston points to some scattered holes that look like they were made by a meticulous gopher. “We brought out a post digger. Nothing doing.”

  “Of course not,” I reply, as if that should be obvious. “Can I check that aerial map again?”

  I compare the image to a scalable one I’ve pulled up on my phone. It’s hard to tell anything without surveying equipment because there aren’t any landmarks nearby. Still, I’ve got a hunch.

  “You got a shovel in here?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Boyer replies. “You plan on digging up a town?”

  “Basically,” I say matter-of-factly.

  He gets the shovel out of the back and hands it to me with a grimace. “Do your magic.”

  “We’ll see.” I start walking north, feeling their eyes on my back. Even Nadine is trying to figure out what the hell I’m up to.

  I guess I am too.

  “The town is this way,” Boyer calls out to me, probably convinced I’m insane.

  I glance back over my shoulder. “Is it, Sheriff?”

  I sound far more confident than I feel. I really don’t want to look like some dumb girl in front of these guys. They’re earnest and counting on the FBI to help them out. But instead of a forensics team, they got me.

  I reach a berm beyond a small incline at the far end of where the town is supposed to be.

  Nadine strides up until we’re shoulder to shoulder and hands me a water bottle. “Please tell me you haven’t gone crazy.”

  It’s cool, but the air is dry. I take a swig then reply, “I don’t think so.” I speak louder so that Cranston and Boyer can hear. “The Warlock has a particular way of problem solving. A kind of “tell,” a way he does things. He likes his mysteries to be TV friendly. Also, he wants them to be foolproof. Even if you think you know how he did it, there’s always a bit of uncertainty. He’ll hide the evidence. Which reminds me of a trick my father used to do involving an orchid. To hide the secret from me, he’d hide the evidence. The Warlock—Heywood—he wants this to appear to be supernatural.”