Dead Sea Rising

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  Terah stopped dead and envisioned dogs cunning enough to go silent as they connived to encircle him. Perhaps even now they were stealthily closing the distance until he would have nowhere to turn when they attacked. He set out again, moving farther and farther from home, fearing they lay in wait for his return. Plus, he vaguely remembered rock formations not terribly far away that might afford him a hiding place, provided he could secure a high enough spot.

  There would be no outwitting the dogs or eluding their noses. Clearly they smelled animals from long distances. How much different could human scent be?

  Terah walked faster, trying to invoke in his mind the silhouettes of massive natural stone formations he remembered on the horizon. That made him envision the dogs too, waiting in the rocks to ambush him. But the nearer he came to where he remembered crags that might offer haven, the easier it was to tell himself the dogs were only in his mind.

  Of the boulders he was certain. The dogs had likely run off in search of other prey. Perhaps they had even bedded down for the night. There! A quarter mile west a jagged outline appeared clearly on the horizon in the moonlight—just as he remembered. Glory to the gods. They had led him here, restored his confidence. From atop the massive rocks he could assure himself no dogs blocked his way back home.

  But when the moon slid behind a cloud, Terah lost sight of his destination. Just keep walking, he told himself. But he had lost his point of reference. He knew men who could walk a straight line in any direction based on the positions of the stars. The logic of that eluded him, but still he strode with purpose to where he believed—hoped—security lay.

  CHAPTER 17

  Manhattan

  The nurse’s efforts to calm Nicole’s mother lowered her pulse, blood pressure, and respiration only a tick each. She appeared calmer, but the numbers didn’t lie. “Should you call Dr. Thorn?” Nicole said.

  “No, this isn’t an emergency, and I ought to be able to manage her vitals with a sleeping pill.”

  “She does look like she could use more rest,” Nicole said.

  “Problem is, I can’t prescribe.” The nurse stepped into the hall and flagged down a colleague. “Can you find me a resident, stat?”

  Soon a plump, dark-haired woman in scrubs knocked and strode directly to the sink. She washed her hands and pulled on latex gloves as the nurse held the chart where she could read it. “Is this the Mrs. Berman?”

  “One and the same.”

  “What’s with the cops out there?”

  “Tell you later,” the nurse said, nodding to Nicole. “Her daughter, Nicole.”

  “Hi, and who’s this?”

  Julia Martinez flashed her badge.

  “My, my,” the doctor said, approaching the bed. “Rock star treatment, Mrs. Berman.” Nicole’s mother eyed her, looking wary and puzzled. “All right, let’s get this light off. How long ago was she anesthetized for surgery?” The nurse pulled up the page on the chart. “Any allergies to drugs?”

  Her mother just stared. “None,” Nicole said.

  “Let’s go with low-dose hypnotic sedative. Five milligrams zolpidem tartrate.”

  “That’s enough?” the nurse whispered.

  The resident nodded. “With her small stature and history. Repeat in thirty minutes if she’s still conscious and her numbers are still elevated. But no more than that. You have it on hand?”

  “We do. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’m on all night if you need me,” the resident told Nicole on her way out.

  Nicole saw terror in her mother’s eyes. “They’re going to give you a pill so you can sleep, Mama. We can talk tomorrow.”

  “Have to—got to—talk now.”

  “No, we don’t. It’ll wait.”

  “Won’t. Wait.”

  “Just try to relax, Mom.”

  “Nic! Listen!”

  Nicole had never seen her mother so exercised. She’d always been the rock of the family, the one Nicole and her father confided in. Nicole sighed. “What is it, Mama?”

  Her voice came slow and liquidy, making Nicole wonder how her vital signs could be so elevated. “Make y—father tell you,” she said, and the effort appeared to leave her exhausted.

  “Tell me what?”

  “The box. Tell you wha’s in the box.”

  “What box?”

  Her mother lifted a hand and drew weak circles in the air. “Box. Gray metal box. Secret. Never tol’ me. Doesn’t know I saw.”

  “Saw what?”

  “Picture. The—the picture of the …”

  “What, Mom?”

  “Of the thing. The thing. The lady.”

  “No idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never even seen a box.”

  “Find. Got to find. Before he comes back.”

  The nurse returned with the medication, but Nicole’s mother kept turning away from the pill. “We need to get your vitals back to normal,” the nurse said.

  “Make. Her. Find box. Find picture.”

  “Okay,” the nurse said, turning to Nicole. “Can you agree to do that so we can get this pill down her?”

  “All right, Mama. All right.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  The nurse whispered, “Should work quickly on her. I’m guessing ten minutes, and she could sleep eight hours.”

  “Good,” Julia Martinez said. “If she ain’t gonna be talkin’, I don’t gotta be here.”

  “Nor do you, Dr. Berman,” the nurse said. “You can take a break, and we’ll bring her to her room in an hour or so.”

  Nicole nodded wearily. With her dad getting in, the cops coming back, and whatever this was her mother was going on about, the day promised to be a doozy.

  “How much stock can I put in what she’s saying?” Nicole said.

  “Very little,” the nurse said. “Could totally be a figment of her imagination, or the drugs—hard to tell. If she remembers it tomorrow, maybe press her on it.”

  Nicole and Julia Martinez stepped into the hall and away from the two uniformed officers. Nicole said, “You heard her. No sense troubling the detective with any of my mother’s gibberish, right?”

  “Okay, listen to me, Dr. Berman. I’ve been all nice and friendly, right? But I gotta decide whether to let you stay here or book you downtown. I got probable cause.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I sound like I’m playin’? I got to answer to my boss if everything isn’t locked down tight here. Your mama said damaging stuff about you and your dad. If I’m gonna go home and go to bed, I gotta be sure she’s safe.”

  “Safe from me? You can’t possibly think—”

  “That’s what I get paid to do, ma’am. I can only go on what I heard.”

  “What you heard from a traumatized woman full of sedatives and confused—”

  “I could get you on obstructin’ justice right now!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Tryin’ to talk me out of telling my boss what she’s been saying about you and your daddy.”

  “I wasn’t! I was just trying to say—”

  “And interfering with an investigation.”

  “You’re reaching now, Julia. I’m not interf—”

  “I heard you promise to look for your father’s secret box.”

  “Which probably doesn’t even exist! And I only said that so she’d take the pill.”

  “How do I know you ain’t gonna go straight to their apartment and look for it?”

  “First, because I’m about to collapse. But what if I did? I have a right to go there with my mother’s permission—”

  “You can’t have it both ways, Ms. Berman. She’s either talkin’ nonsense or she’s not. If the hatin’ and the box and the secret are all just confusion and drugs, what’s that make her permission?”

  Nicole shrugged.

  “Don’t you get it? Their place is a crime scene. You can’t be pokin’ around in there.”

  “Fine,” Nicole said
. “Forget I said anything—anything about what you should or shouldn’t tell your boss. And yes, I should have assumed their apartment would be off-limits till the investigation was over. You have my word I won’t go there.”

  “Your word. You think I finished fifth at the academy by bein’ stupid? You want me to just trust you ’cause you got a title in front a your name? Tell you what—you wanna stay here with Mama tonight, you can’t be talking to her anymore without NYPD in the room.”

  “In the room? Even in Eleven West?”

  “Especially there! I don’t know when she’s gonna wake up, and neither do you. You goin’ there now?”

  Nicole nodded.

  “Then one will go with you and the other’ll come when she does. Now I gotta get your dad’s secret box added to the search warrant.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Ur

  Terah could not make sense of it. Not only had the moon disappeared, but the stars too. What was Nanna up to? Until this moment, the moon god had illumined his path, something the stars couldn’t do anyway. But any hope, any sense of where he was, left him no better than a blind man unless something shifted in the black sky.

  So this was the answer to his fervent prayers? Had even Nanna proved worthless? He was at least a reluctant god this night. King Nimrod had proved worse than reluctant—he was devious. All Terah’s hopes now lay in the lesser gods, also represented by idols he had carved. And while he had long prayed to them in earnest faith, now he wondered, doubted. Was there something to Belessunu’s prayers? Had her god truly spoken through her? And if so, to him?

  If his gods had not drawn him out into the wilderness, who had? Terah dared not stop and ponder it. For this blackest of all nights to descend now was worse than foul fortune. If a pack of wild dogs considered him prey, his life was at stake. He had to keep moving, had no choice but to continue. But was he still pointed the right direction? No matter how hard he squinted or how fast he blinked, Terah detected nothing. His hearing and smell became acute. Or was it madness that made him imagine the breath of predators and the tangy mustiness of wild fur? Had these beasts run long distances to now sit on their haunches, waiting to pounce? He must neither show fear nor even move too quickly.

  Hands before him like one who walks in his sleep, Terah felt for solid rock, prayed for it. But now even he didn’t know to whom he was praying. The sleeping Utu? The bashful Nanna? The treacherous Nimrod? Or the lesser gods, the ones his wife called his handmade rubbish? Terah could not be choosy. He prayed to them all, and whichever deigned to answer would be fine with him.

  Even stepping so carefully into the unknown, traversing a quarter mile should not have taken this long. Terah was convinced he had veered hopelessly off course and that his next destination would be the Euphrates—normally more than a week’s journey from his home. The scent and sounds of the animals grew more real. He fell to his knees in despair, only to gash both shins on rocks. He rolled to his side, covering the wounds with his hands. But the blood seeped through his fingers. The dripping gore was sure to bring the dogs.

  “I pray to the one true God of my ancestors!” he cried. “If You are there, if You are true, forgive my unbelief! Forgive my straying from You! Deliver me and I will serve You and worship You and make Your name known!”

  It was all or nothing now, for his shouts would draw the dogs if the smell of his blood did not.

  Deep in his being, Terah felt God speak to him. “Arise and walk, for your salvation draws nigh.”

  He rose and staggered on, still reaching, feeling, hoping, anticipating. The moon reappeared just in time to reveal before his face a wall of sheer rock. Had the God of Noah delivered him? Or did this mean that Nanna, the moon deity, was the god of all gods after all? In the radiance that came from the sky, Terah espied the mouth of a cave.

  And from only yards behind him came the unmistakable growling, panting, barking, charging of wild dogs.

  CHAPTER 19

  Manhattan

  “So you drew the short straw?” Nicole said to the officer accompanying her to her mother’s room on Eleven West. She guessed him at 6’4” and 250 pounds, but the Kevlar vest under his uniform shirt made him look even bigger. The nameplate over his right shirt pocket read “D. Decker.” Something tells me you’re a rookie.”

  “Fourteen months on the job, ma’am. But I don’t know what you mean by short straw.”

  “Make me feel old, why don’t you?” she said. “Just means you got the job no one wanted.”

  “I’m to know where you are at all times, and also to protect you. I’ll be right outside your door the rest of the night.”

  “I feel safe already,” she said. Who’d want to tangle with this young man? “Any gunplay in your first fourteen months?”

  “No, ma’am. That’s not as common as on TV.”

  “Fisticuffs?”

  “Don’t know that word either.”

  “Fights. Fought anyone?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. We’re s’posed to carry ourselves in such as way as to discourage that before it starts.”

  “Easier for you than most, I’m sure.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Listen, Decker, did you hear Officer Martinez mention adding something to a search warrant?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Can you do that, get a warrant to search a crime scene for whatever you want?”

  “If I remember what they taught us at the academy, the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches. So even though this looks like an attempted murder case, we’d have to have a warrant based on probable cause. It’s not like any search would be fair game. The warrant application has to be specific, so the crime scene guys don’t violate privacy rights.”

  “So why would Officer Martinez want to add my dad’s box to the warrant?”

  “Sorry, I don’t know enough to say.”

  Nicole hadn’t allowed herself to consider her mother’s apparent attack attempted murder, but she couldn’t deny it. She could only imagine how her mother’s mention of her father’s secret box would sound to Detective Wojciechowski under the circumstances. He’d have to assume he’d stumbled upon a motive.

  Nicole approached the registration desk at Eleven West. “I’m—”

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Dr. Berman,” a young woman said. “All settled in?”

  “Just about.”

  “We offer room service any time of the day or night.”

  “Even for visitors?”

  “Yes.” She consulted her video monitor. “The order form is in the room, and for you it’s complimentary.” The young woman looked past Nicole. “And will you be here overnight, Officer?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And when Mrs. Berman arrives, another officer will join me.”

  She handed him two meal forms. “On the NYPD account?”

  He nodded, and she brought him two folding chairs from a back room.

  “Done this before, Decker?” Nicole said as they headed down the hall.

  “More than once,” he said. “Happy to serve.”

  “What’re you blushing about?” she said.

  “Been out with that girl is all.”

  “You don’t say …”

  He set his chair next to her door and tipped his cap. “Night, ma’am.”

  Nicole unpacked, filled out her breakfast order for six and a half hours later, and opened the door to hang it on the knob. Decker’s form was already there. “Were you ordering for the both of us?” she said.

  “No, ma—”

  “A joke, son.”

  Nicole always prayed at bedtime, but she hadn’t knelt in ages. Now it seemed the thing to do. She changed, knelt by the bed, and prayed for her father’s safety, her mother’s recovery, and her own peace of mind. She also prayed for Officer Julia Martinez, who had come across over zealous, confrontational.

  “I don’t know that she’s intentionally persecuting me, Lord,” Nicole said. “But You know. Answer me in the da
y of distress. May the God of Jacob fortify me. Send me help and support from Your mighty hand. Grant my heart’s desire, and I will rejoice in Your deliverance from heaven.

  “Some rely upon chariots and horses, but I invoke the name of the Lord my God—Yeshua Hamashiac, Adonai, my strong tower. Amen.”

  Curious as she was, Nicole found herself unable to pray about whatever her mother had been referring to—some secret box and its mysterious photo. She was convinced it had to be a drug-induced hallucination. Such talk was so strange for her mother, usually so precise and careful. She seldom speculated and rarely overreacted.

  And her father a man of secrets? Nicole couldn’t imagine it. While, yes, she’d had to do her own Internet search to discover when and how he was wounded in Vietnam, it made sense he wouldn’t want to discuss that. What wounded vet wants to revisit the day he thought he would die? Those who had seen the worst of war, injured or not, were known for leaving it in the past. He was no exception. In fact, the few times she had tried to draw him out on the subject, he actually paled and shook his head.

  But stories from her father’s life before and after Nam showed him as plain-spoken and straightforward as anyone she’d ever known. He seemed to have himself figured out and had come to grips with the man who had grown from that angry, rebellious teen.

  His hiding anything from her mother didn’t jibe with the man she knew. Anesthesia had to have caused her mother to concoct this story out of some subconscious fear that her husband couldn’t possibly be all that he seemed because down deep she didn’t feel worthy of such a man.

  But she was! Her steady faith and love for him was largely responsible for the man he had become.

  Nicole knew she had to stop worrying about what her mother said or what it revealed. The woman would not likely remember it in the morning, and they would both laugh about it someday.

  The fatigue that had assaulted Nicole when she’d run home for dinner never really left her. It had been only camouflaged by worry and tension over what Kayla Jefferson had revealed upon her return to the hospital. Learning your mother had tripped, fallen, and broken a hip was one thing. Finding out there had likely been foul play, being suspected if not accused of it, being separated from her dad at such a crucial time, and then having her mother talk nonsense that would be reported to the police—well, that was something else.