So that got me thinking. Whiting, Tommy, me. This darkness has been in our family, moving from generation to generation. Molly, it’s like it had been following me, waiting for the right time. I try not to think about it anymore.
Can’t wait to see you again.
Love,
Sam
Seventy-Three
OTHER NOTES
Appearing in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
GETTYSBURG—Albert W. Drake, 42, passed on Friday, November 19. He was the husband of Nicole Drake, of Jonesville, WI, whom he married on July 17, 1990. Albert was a graduate of Glidden High School. He was the son of Thomas and Florence Drake. In addition to Nicole, Albert leaves behind a daughter, Bethany. A private service will be held for the family only, at an undisclosed location.
Excerpt from the transcript of the radio show Mitch Lewis Live, which aired February 10. The host is Mitch Lewis, and the guest is “Lucretia Billows.”
LEWIS: OK, all you fans of conspiracies and cover-ups, boy, have I got a tale to tell you. This one’s right out of the books, a real barn burner. Remember back in November when that Travis fella took a shot at Senator Lincoln? If you’ve been watching the news, you know he claims he missed on purpose and that he was trying to save his daughter who’d been kidnapped by one Albert Drake, the man allegedly responsible for six murders in and around the Gettysburg area in the week preceding November 19.
Drake, as you’ve heard, was shot and killed by the police. Well, there’s more to the story than meets the eye. Mr. Drake, it seems, is a man of mystery, a man who died twice. A year and a half ago he went missing. Witnesses said he’d been shot and killed and his body dumped in Lake Michigan, off South Shore Park, in Milwaukee. A search commenced, but his body was never found. Regardless, he was pronounced dead. Then, a few months ago, he shows up again on some murder spree that ended with the kidnapping of a little girl and his own death—the second time.
With me today on the phone is Lucretia Billows. That’s an alias. She’s asked that her real name not be used for her own protection. Lucretia knew Mr. Drake before he died the first time and has some light to shed on his mysterious identity and proclivity for death.
Lucretia, welcome to Mitch Lewis Live. We’re happy to have you on the show.
BILLOWS: Thanks, Mitch. Um, I’m glad to be here.
LEWIS: Lucretia, why don’t you start off by telling us your relationship with Drake?
BILLOWS: Sure, um, Albert—he liked being called Albert—and I were both part of a group called the Marxist Brotherhood. As the name implies, we were Marxists. There were a couple hundred of us altogether. We were a small group as far as those kind of groups go, but we had some big ideas.
LEWIS: What kind of ideas?
BILLOWS: Government takeover, mainly. We were…we were planning to take over the government by infiltrating it with Marxists. I can’t get into how we were going to do it, but that was our plan. Um, when Albert joined our group, he was kind of an outsider from the start. The other guys were really gung ho about the mission, you know, and Albert, he–he just wasn’t. He was brainy, really smart, knew all kinds of things, useless stuff even, and the other guys, they teased him a lot but kept him around because he was useful.
LEWIS: So what were the circumstances surrounding his death the first time?
BILLOWS: We were supposed to meet, to get together in one of the guy’s homes, a trailer. Is it OK if I don’t mention names? I have to be careful.
LEWIS: Absolutely.
BILLOWS: OK, um, we were getting together at this guy’s trailer, and Albert was one of the first ones there. He got in an argument with another guy, said he was leaving the group and spilling his guts. The other guy…shots were fired, bam, bam, bam—it was so loud in there—and Albert was hit three times in the chest. I can still see it. He stumbled back a couple feet and fell against the door. He looked at his chest, and then at me, like he was surprised or something. Then he went down.
LEWIS: In the house, the trailer? He was shot inside?
BILLOWS: Yeah, shot dead. Or that’s what I thought at first. I panicked, but the other guy, he was real cool about it, made some phone calls, and before I knew it they were taking Albert’s body away in an ambulance.
LEWIS: And did they dump his body in Lake Michigan?
BILLOWS: No, some guy was paid off to tell the cops that he’d seen Albert shot, and another was paid off to say he saw a body that looked like Albert’s being dumped in the lake off South Shore Park.
LEWIS: So what happened to Albert’s body?
BILLOWS: Well, apparently he wasn’t dead when they took him away. And the ambulance, it wasn’t even real, at least not real in the sense that they took him to a hospital. They took him to our headquarters. At the time it was located in downtown Milwaukee.
LEWIS: Wait a minute. So let me get this right. The ambulance was a real ambulance, lights and everything, but the drivers had been paid off too? Or were they part of your group?
BILLOWS: I’m not sure. They were either paid off or threatened. We had friends in some very high places.
LEWIS: Such as?
BILLOWS: Name it. The police, local government, big government, judges. Everywhere. They weren’t officially part of our group, but they helped us, like, sympathized with us.
LEWIS: Unbelievable. So, in a sense, you’d already infiltrated the government, the ball was rolling.
BILLOWS: Oh, yeah. We had our fingers in every aspect of social life. But the guys, they wanted more, they wanted the whole thing.
LEWIS: OK, so the ambulance takes Drake’s body away. Then what?
BILLOWS: A group of doctors we worked with nursed him back to health and reprogrammed him. That’s what they called it.
LEWIS: Reprogrammed? Can you be more specific?
BILLOWS: I don’t know how specific I can, I can be. I wasn’t there for all the training sessions, but basically, I mean what they did was brainwash him. Erase his brain and start over. It was big-time stuff, a lot of torture, isolated confinement, sleep deprivation, stuff like that.
LEWIS: And were they successful?
BILLOWS: Not totally. That’s when I started getting uncomfortable. Some of the guys, they were so desperate to make this work, they, um, got involved in occult kind of stuff. Weird stuff. Creeped me out. They wanted to assassinate Lincoln, said he was a major obstacle, that if he won the presidency, which it looked like he would, he would ruin everything they’d done so far. But Albert just didn’t have the skills to pull it off. Mentally he did, but physically he just wasn’t ready. So they went looking for someone else, someone obscure, and found Travis. That’s when they were at their deepest with the occult stuff. Finally I had enough and left the group. I’ve been in hiding ever since. Beyond that, I don’t know what they did or how they pulled it off.
LEWIS: Wow. Wow. What a story. So if we put the pieces together, we can assume Drake was sent to Gettysburg to kidnap Travis’s daughter as leverage to get Travis to take a shot at Lincoln while he gave his speech on national television. Travis had the physical skill they needed—he was a crack shot with a rifle—and he was unassuming.
BILLOWS: And he was … he was vulnerable. They prey on the weak.
LEWIS: Wow. All I can say is wow. Lucretia, thank you for joining us. I hope someday you can share your story in its fullest without fear of retaliation. You take care and be safe, OK?
BILLOWS: Thanks, Mitch. I’ll stay on the move.
Excerpt from an Associated Press article that appeared in the Washington Post:
In a move that raised many eyebrows around the country, President Lincoln visited his would-be assassin in the high-security Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex in Allenwood, PA. Prison officials said the meeting between President Lincoln and Samuel Travis, the man who attempted to assassinate then-Senator Lincoln, lasted a little more than an hour. Later the same day Mr. Lincoln exercised his right as president and granted Travis a full pardon, cutting short Travis’s eight
een-year sentence.
Seventy-Four
THE SKY HAD NEVER SEEMED BRIGHTER TO MOLLY, THE AIR never cleaner. The smell of cut grass was in the air, and somewhere in the distance a lawnmower hummed. Overhead, a couple starlings bantered with a hawk. By Molly’s side Eva gripped her hand tightly and smiled up at her. She’d gone through a growth spurt in the last year and lost some of her baby fat. She was looking more and more like a little lady.
“You ready for this, sweetie?”
“Ready, Mom. I can’t wait to see him.”
Molly looked at her watch: 9:03 a.m. He should be emerging from the building anytime now. The Allenwood correctional facility was an imposing structure, and every time Molly visited Sam here, she felt intimidated by its size and coldness. But today it didn’t seem so big or chilly.
She combed her free hand through her hair, pushed a few loose strands behind her ear. “How do I look?” she asked Eva.
“You look pretty, like you always do. How do I look?”
“Beautiful. Like an angel.”
Then, just like that, the glass door swung open, and he was standing there in street clothes, jeans and a blue T-shirt, duffel bag in one hand. A free man.
Eva let go of her hand and said, “Daddy’s back.” Then she took off toward Sam.
Tears blurred Molly’s eyes and put a lump in her throat.
No sooner had Sam passed through the door and into the shade of the building’s overhang than Eva was on her way to him, arms open wide. She was smiling big and bright, and tears were rolling down her cheeks. Sam released his duffel bag and dropped to his knees. He took her in his arms and almost fell over backward. Over the past year and a half he’d seen her only a handful of times and hadn’t been able to touch her at all. She smelled great, like soap and shampoo, and fit perfectly in his arms.
“I love you so much, Daddy. I’m so glad you can come home with us.”
“Me too, baby girl. Me too.”
Then Molly was there, and Sam released Eva and stood. When his wife smiled at him, it was as if beams of light radiated from her pores. She looked stunning. Without hesitation she threw herself at him, and he was there to catch her. They held each other for a long time without saying a word. They’d been through so much, so much darkness, but things were different now—and always would be.
“I love you,” Molly whispered into his ear.
Sam squeezed her. “I love you too. Let’s go home.”
With one arm around his wife, he reached over and put his other around his daughter, who had hoisted his duffel bag over her shoulder. Together the three of them stepped out from the shade into the light.
Note to the Reader
AS OF THE WRITING OF THIS, I HAVE THREE DAUGHTERS AND a fourth on the way. By the time it meets your eyes I will have four daughters. I know well the love between a daddy and his girls. I know the love a daddy has for his children. Many of you do too. And every day it reminds me of the love my heavenly Father has for me.
Reader, friend, God loves you. I know it‘s become somewhat of a bumper sticker cliché in recent history—Smile, God loves you—but it‘s a cliché that rings true. He does love you. In fact, He loves you more than you could ever love Him back. We‘ve never experienced that kind of love before. Human love, even at its best and purest, is still flawed. It has to be because we are flawed, and imperfect people can‘t offer perfect love. But God can, and He does.
I know many of you don’t want to be preached to—that’s not why you pick up a novel—but some things just need to be said. God’s love for you is unconditional; it has no bounds, no limits, no prerequisites, and knows no bias. Nothing you do, nothing you have done, can quench His love. It’s a fire burning brightly, and no amount of water can extinguish it. This is the love you’ve been searching for your whole life.
So what’s the one thing He asks for in return? Simply that we accept His love.
His love for us—for you—drove Him to set into motion the most astounding act of sacrifice this world has ever seen. He sent His Son, Jesus, to this world to take the punishment for our crimes, our selfishness, our hatred, our sin. His love produced the greatest gift mankind has ever known—the gift of eternal life. And all we have to do is accept it.
OK, that’s my preaching. Now a personal message. Thank you. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a million times, until my mouth goes dry and blisters and I can’t speak any more—I have the greatest readers in the industry. Many of you have been with me from the beginning, from my first announcement right before The Hunted released that I was diagnosed with colon cancer. You’ve supported me, encouraged me, and prayed for me. And though it’s impossible for me to know you all by name, please know that I appreciate every one of you and pray for you. And I pray your numbers will increase and more people will be exposed to these stories of hope and redemption, faith and forgiveness. Stories of love.
—MIKE DELLOSSO
Coming in 2012 from Mike Dellosso—Frantic
One
THE NIGHT MARNY TOOGOOD WAS BORN IT RAINED AXE heads and hammer handles.
His grandfather made a prediction, said it was an omen of some sort, that it meant Marny’s life would be stormy, full of rain clouds and lightning strikes. Wanting to prove her father wrong, Janie Toogood named her son Marnin, which means “one who brings joy,” instead of the Mitchell she and her husband had agreed on.
But in spite of Janie’s good intentions, and regardless of what his birth certificate said, Marny’s grandfather was right.
At the exact time he was delivered into this world and his grandfather was portending a dark future, Marny’s father was en route to the hospital from his job at Winden’s Furniture Factory where he was stuck working the graveyard shift. He’d gotten the phone call that Janie was in labor, dropped his hammer, and ran out of the plant. He wanted to be there when his son was born. Fifteen minutes from the hospital his pickup hit standing water, hydroplaned, and tumbled down a steep embankment, landing in a stand of eastern white pines. The coroner said he experienced a quick death; he did not suffer.
One week after Marny’s birth his grandfather died of a heart attack. He too didn’t suffer.
Twenty-six years and more than a couple lifetimes of hurt later, Marny found himself working at Condon’s Gas ‘n Go and living above the garage in a small studio apartment George Condon rented to him for two hundred bucks a month. It was nothing special, but it was a place to lay his head at night and dream about that dark cloud that relentlessly stalked him.
But one thing his mother told him every day until the moment she died was that behind every rain cloud is the sun, just waiting to shine its light and dry the earth’s tears.
Marny held on to that promise, those last words of his mother, and thought about them every night before he succumbed to sleep and entered a world that was as unfriendly and frightening as any fairy tale forest—the place of his dreams, the only place more dark and doomful than his life.
The day reality collided with the world of Marny’s nightmares and those storm clouds grew darker than he’d ever seen them, it was hotter than blazes, strange for a June day in Maine. The sun sat high in the sky, and waves of heat rolled over the asphalt lot at Condon’s Gas ‘n Go. The weather kept everyone indoors, which meant business was slow for a Saturday. Marny sat in the garage bay, waiting for Mr. Condon to take his turn in checkers, and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Man, it’s hot.”
Mr. Condon didn’t look up from the checkerboard. “Ayuh. Wicked hot. News man said it could hit ninety today.”
“So it’ll probably get up to ninety-five.”
Mr. Condon rubbed at his white stubble. “Ayuh.”
He was sixty-two and looked every bit of it. His leather-tough skin was creased with deep wrinkles. Lots of frown lines. Marny had worked for him going on two years but felt like he’d known the old mechanic for decades. George Condon had one daughter in the area. She lived upstate, near Caribou. His other daught
er married a navy man and lived in Japan. He rarely spoke of either, but once Marny caught him staring at a faded photo of the three of them when the girls were but children. He kept the photo in a drawer of his desk.
Mr. Condon made his move, looked at Marny, and squinted. Behind him, Ed Ricker’s Dodge truck rested on the lift. The transmission had blown, and Mr. Condon should have been working on it instead of playing checkers. But old Condon operated at a speed all his own and kept his own schedule. His customers knew that, and not one ever complained. George Condon was the best, and cheapest, mechanic in the Downeast Region. He’d been getting cars and trucks through one more Maine winter for going on forty-five years.
Marny studied the checkerboard, feeling the weight of Mr. Condon’s dark eyes on him the whole time, and was just about to make his move when the bell chimed, signaling someone had pulled up to the pump island. Condon’s was the only full-service station left in the Downeast, maybe in the whole state of Maine.
Despite the heat, Mr. Condon didn’t have one droplet of sweat on his face. “Cah’s waitin’, son.”
Darkness Follows Page 25