by Osborne, Jon
Before Janice knew what was happening, the blonde man was suddenly on top of the desk and launching his huge body through the air.
Her entire world slammed into slow motion, her terrified eyes widening in abject horror as the sharp silver knife came flashing down like a lightning strike on her exposed throat. Fumbling for the steel letter opener on her desk, she whipped it up in front of her face and squeezed shut her eyes tight just as the huge blonde man came crashing down on top of her.
A moment later, she was gasping for breath beneath the man’s heavy weight as his muscular body pinned her hard to the floor. Janice’s entire soul trembled as warm liquid spurted over her face from the open wound at the man’s throat. Only the handle of the letter opener remained visible now; the rest of it had been jammed deep into the blonde man’s throbbing jugular vein.
Janice started screaming again then, drowning out the watery gurgling sounds the huge blonde man made as he choked to death on his own blood. In the chemistry lab across Jackson Hall, Joe Blanton and Kenneth Hammond finally zipped up their pants and used Joe’s Motorola Razr cellphone to call the police. And why not? They’d just finished up with what they’d been doing, anyway.
Besides, each boy had a girlfriend who he needed to get back to right away. And considering the girls’ own adventurous natures, no doubt the kinky little bitches had been up to the exact same thing with one another while Joe and Kenneth had been away.
Then again, college was completely awesome like that, wasn’t it?
Goddamn right, it was.
CHAPTER 35
Blankenship extracted his iPhone from the inside pocket of his blazer and connected it to Jarvis’s computer with the same USB wire that he’d used to connect to the television set back at the Devine Office Building in New York City earlier in the day.
Dana shuddered, trying her best to erase from her brain the horrifying memory of Laura Settle’s brutal murder in the elevator car. Didn’t work. She had very little doubt that the sickening images would remain seared into her memory forever. And like it or not, there wasn’t a goddamn thing she could do about it now. After all, she couldn’t very well un-see what she’d already seen, now could she? Of course she couldn’t. And at least the gruesome images from the elevator car would have plenty of company inside her horror-show mind, right?
Dana shook her head to chase away the images. “What’re you doing?” she asked, looking on over Blankenship’s shoulder and trying desperately to move along her thoughts to somewhere else. Anywhere other than the elevator car back in New York City and the nauseating events that had transpired within the confines of its cramped and blood-spattered walls.
Blankenship tapped a few commands into the iPhone’s keypad. “Running a program that’ll search Jarvis’s computer for hidden files,” he said. “Documents, photographs, videos – that kind of stuff.”
Dana lifted her eyebrows, confused. “Didn’t you do that already?”
Blankenship shook his head. “Not really. Nothing hardcore, at least. I performed a quick manual sweep back at Jarvis’s apartment, but now I’m basically using a Hoover in place of a broom.”
“Paints quite the abstract picture.”
Blankenship laughed distractedly, already lost in his work on the computer and not reading Dana’s meaning between the lines. “Doesn’t it just, though? I guess you could call me the Jackson Pollock of computers if you couldn’t think of anything else to call me.”
Though she easily could have thought of far more colorful endearments to call him at the moment, Dana bit her tongue. “Fine, Jackson Pollock,” she said. “I guess what I’m trying to tell you here is that nothing of what you just said made any sense to me.” Dana had tried her best for years, but she’d never been able to understand computers much beyond the basics of knowing how to surf the Internet and check her email. Unfortunately for her, though, Blankenship didn’t seem to be much of a teacher. Quite the opposite, actually.
Blankenship finally glanced up from his iPhone. “Right, sorry about that, Dana. I guess sometimes I forget just how big of a geek I am.” He shook his head. “Anyway, if you want to hide files from the prying eyes of others – and if you know what you’re doing – it’s a fairly simple proposition to throw off the casual snoop. Unfortunately for whomever Jarvis was working, though, I’m not a casual snoop. I’m a professional one.”
And with that thoroughly mystifying explanation, he hit another key on his iPhone and sat back in his seat without really having explained anything at all. Dana pressed her lips together in irritation and looked on over Blankenship’s shoulder again while an indecipherable jumble of numbers, letters and symbols flashed across the MacBook Pro’s screen. After several interminable moments of the disorienting visual hodge-podge, the electronic madness finally came to an abrupt stop.
Blankenship leaned forward in his seat and ran his stare across the screen. “Bingo,” he said. “That didn’t take very long, now did it?”
Dana frowned “What did you find?”
Blankenship shifted the computer on his tray table in order to afford her a better angle at the screen. “Jarvis tried to mask this particular file in a misleading directory. Third grade-level shit, really. He didn’t do a very good job of it. In any event, it’s a video.”
Dana leaned in closer to the screen. “A video of what?”
Blankenship shrugged. “No idea. Wanna find out?”
“Of course. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
Blankenship enlarged the screen and moved the digital pointer over the PLAY button before tapping the trackpad once. Movement sprang to life on the screen.
In the video, Lee Maxwell Jarvis had obviously dressed in his Sunday best. The white-supremacist murderer was stomping frantically back and forth across a large stage located in what appeared to be the front of a huge auditorium. From all appearances, he’d been filled right up to his murdering eyeballs with the oh-so-energizing presence of the Holy Spirit.
The stage across which Jarvis stomped was decked out with elaborate candelabras, burning candles of varying heights illuminating the religious spectacle. A humongous banner provided the backdrop for the holy-roller scene, emblazoned with the inspirational message, Jesus is the Way and the Light! Clever juxtaposition with the candles, Dana supposed. Or at least a juxtaposition of some sort, anyway.
Perspiring heavily, Jarvis was shouting into a wireless microphone and whipping up his audience into a frenzied pitch through the dramatic use of his voice, his tone rising and falling theatrically in a well-worn public-speaking technique known to televangelists all around the world. His lilting cadences hypnotized his listeners, filled them with euphoria – and most likely loosened up their wallets and purse strings too, Dana guessed.
“The heathen expresses Black roots!” Jarvis wailed, a statement that drew orgasmic cheers from the assembled faithful. “Of the hell everyone rues, here oscillates our destiny! Today’s harbinger envelops blatant racial overtones. Therefore, He expects rabid hate of ordinary disciples! To honor evolutionary black radicalism over the highly exalted ruler has obviously only destroyed the Heavenly expressions brought raining over the helpers employed.”
Dana reached over and tapped the pause button. “What the fuck is this shit?” she snapped. “It doesn’t even make any sense.”
Blankenship shrugged. “Don’t know. Shall we watch a bit more of it, though? I was just getting into it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this movie before.”
Dana shook her head in exasperation, then leaned forward and tapped the play button again. “I guess we don’t have much choice.”
On the screen, Jarvis went on with his over-the-top delivery. “Reality has offered overwhelming damnation to he engaged – brokenhearted – raiding our time here, effectively reducing Heaven’s own omnipresent deity to…”
Three minutes later, the annoying video blissfully came to an end. “It’s complete fucking gibberish,” Dana said when Jarvis had completed his nonsensical rant
ing in the auditorium. “What the fuck is this asshole talking about?”
Blankenship shook his head. “Not a clue, partner. But did you get a load of the crowd shots?”
Dana nodded. Even though Jarvis’s words might as well have been Chinese to her and Blankenship, those in attendance had glowed with all the religious zeal and fervor of Heaven’s Gate cult members listening to Marshall Applewhite proselytize about the Hale-Bopp comet, right before the UFO enthusiasts had committed mass suicide in San Diego, California back in 1997.
Dana blew out a frustrated breath that sagged her chest. “I’m going to have someone back at Quantico transcribe that crap just as soon as we touch down in Washington,” she said. “I want to read it, but I really don’t think I can stomach listening to it again.”
Blankenship lifted his eyebrows at her. “Why are you going to do that?”
Dana shifted in her seat. A weird feeling buzzed in her veins. “I don’t know. Something about Jarvis’s words just bugs the shit out of me for some reason. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is – I just know that it bugs me.”
Blankenship shook his head. “No, what I mean is: why are you going to have somebody back in Quantico transcribe the thing? You’re looking at one of the fastest speed-typists in the world sitting right here next to you.”
Dana pulled back her head in surprise. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Blankenship pressed his lips together into a grim line. “I’d never kid about something that serious. A hundred and ninety-two words per minute when I’m really in zone. Four-time intramural champ at M.I.T.”
Dana lifted her eyebrows and swept a hand over the keyboard. “By all means, sir.”
Blankenship smiled and stretched his fingers. Plugging a pair of earbuds into a small hole located on the left-hand side of the Macbook Pro, he placed the buds into his ears and restarted the video on the computer before getting down to work.
“Watch and learn, sister,” he said. “Watch. And. Learn.”
CHAPTER 36
Granny Bernice’s funeral at St Anthony’s Catholic Church three days later marked the saddest, most beautiful event Angel had ever attended. Moving and poignant at times, happy and joyful at others as they all remembered her grandmother’s remarkable life.
They didn’t have a lot of family, she and Granny Bernice, but what they had came flying in from all around the country to be with them that day. One distant cousin had even flown in all the way from California. That’s how much people had loved her grandmother, and Angel only hoped that her own funeral would be as well attended one day. From start to finish, the funeral Mass proved a fitting tribute to a woman who’d always been there for everyone else her entire life.
The priest had made everyone laugh when he’d told the assembled congregation about the first time he’d ever met Granny Bernice.
“She came up to me after Mass one Sunday morning and looked me square in the eye,” the man recounted. “She said, ‘Father Peter, if our God is such a loving God, why the heck does He always let the Yankees win the pennant every year? Wouldn’t you think He’d let the Indians win one every once in a while, too? I mean, I’m a patient woman and all, but this is starting to get ridiculous. I’ve been waiting around since 1948 for another World Series title, and to tell you the truth, it’s starting to get on my nerves a little bit.’”
After services, they’d all driven in a long caravan to Edgewater Cemetery with little magnetic funeral flags planted on their cars. Granny Bernice would be facing the rising sun out over the water for the rest of eternity now, and Angel knew she would’ve been happy about that. Her grandmother had always loved the sunrise so very much.
By the time Angel finally made it back to their house on the west side of Cleveland that night, it was almost nine-thirty and she was exhausted in every possible sense of the word. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually.
Curling up on the couch with Tinkerbelle in her lap, she held the kitten close and gently stroked Tinkerbell’s soft black fur, letting the tears come again.
But Tinkerbelle wasn’t the only security blanket Angel had with her that night. Not even close. She also had one of her grandmother’s old T-shirts, holding it close to her face every few minutes and breathing in the old woman’s scent. It was the most comforting smell she’d ever known.
Right before she drifted off to sleep – alone for the first time in her life since she’d been a baby – Angel whispered softly into the darkness.
“Nothing’s changed, you know. I still love you with all my heart, Granny Bernice.
“We’re always going to be best friends forever.”
CHAPTER 37
Perspiring heavily and his face pale, Josef Sullivan entered the Race Master’s den, which was currently filled with the frenetic sounds of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Sullivan swallowed hard. To say that his employer was not the kind of man who suffered bad news lightly would have been the understatement of the century. Maybe even the millennium.
The twelve-inch Beethoven disc revolving on the antique record player over in the corner of the room marked just one of the many priceless records in the Race Master’s extensive collection; a collection the man’s family had acquired in the late 1930s and early 1940s from the sniveling Jewish hordes – sub-humans who’d been rightfully sent off to be burned alive in such places as Auschwitz, Treblinka and Dachau.
News of the failed mission in New Mexico turned the Race Master’s own face red with fury. Seething, he paced the room, muttering to himself.
The Race Master finally stopped pacing and looked back up at Sullivan. “Not your fault, Josef,” he said. “Not your fault at all. The operative simply fucked up. We never should have sent him in the first place. He obviously wasn’t ready for an assignment of this magnitude.”
Sullivan breathed out a grateful sigh of relief, badly needing to go to the bathroom. Not knowing what else to say, he simply offered a weak, “Thank you, sir.”
The Race Master stared at him coldly. “Don’t thank me just yet, Josef. You’re still going to have to pay for this. This is twice now that you’ve failed me and I need to make an example out of you. I can’t have the other men thinking that this sort of thing is acceptable. You fail me and you pay the price. It’s as simple as that. It’s always been as simple as that. You know that. Goodbye, old friend.”
At the Race Master’s signal, Bane leapt at Sullivan’s throat. Snarling angrily, the dog bit down deep into the man’s throbbing jugular vein, opening up the fleshy tube of like a burst water line in a flash of bright white teeth.
A powerful jet of blood spurted across the room while Bane pulled the screaming man down to the floor and went to work.
Forty-five seconds later, it was all over.
As three men in blue overalls cleaned up the mess in his den, the Race Master selected the youngest of the trio as his new assistant. The young man appeared strong in the shoulders, and in the past had shown a desire to take a more active role in their mission.
“You’re my Number Two now, Richard,” the Race Master said, patting the young man on the shoulder and handing him the dossier on Marjorie Trimble out in Sacramento, California. “Make this happen for me.”
Richard Patton swallowed nervously. “Yes, sir. I’ll certainly do my very best.”
The Race Master nodded and cut his stare down to Josef Sullivan’s mangled corpse on the floor three feet away. From all appearances, Bane seemed to be eating the man’s Adam’s apple at the moment.
“You do that, Richard. Just make sure your best is good enough.”
CHAPTER 38
True to his word, Bruce Blankenship sped through the transcription of the Jarvis video in no time flat, his fingers flying over the keyboard so quickly that it made Liberace tickling the ivories on center stage at Madison Square Garden look almost slow by comparison. Thankfully, though, Blankenship eschewed the flair and ridiculous outfits that had marked the flamboyant virtuoso pianist
’s time in the spotlight. Dana didn’t think she could handle seeing him in anything other than a conservative ensemble.
When their plane finally touched down at Seattle-Tacoma airport a couple hours later, Dana’s watch told her that it was nearly four a.m. – but that wasn’t figuring in the three-hour time-zone shift out on the West Coast. She just hoped that her body would adjust well enough to the time difference to keep her at the top of her game. She knew she needed to keep her mind clear and her body fresh if she wanted to get the drop on her quarry – whomever in the hell that might be, exactly – and like it or not, to do that she’d require a few hours’ sleep.
As she and Blankenship gathered up their belongings and waited with all the other passengers to get off the plane, Dana made a mental note to call her landlord back home in Cleveland and ask the woman to feed Oreo in the morning. Too late for that now, though.
Dana sighed heavily. Once again – as had so often been the case in the past – she felt the profound loss of Eric Carlton, who’d taken care of Oreo whenever Dana had been called out of town on business. She and Eric had even called Oreo their “son” when Eric had been alive, and Eric had always taken his responsibilities as a father very seriously. To the point of actually providing Oreo with his own bedroom in apartment D13 and feeding the cat the exact same foods he ate himself during mealtimes.
The supremely ridiculous thought of them enjoying dinner together made Dana smile. Then again, that was exactly the kind of man Eric had been. The kind of person who always treated others equally – if not even better than himself – whether they came in human form or the feline equivalent.
Dana pursed her lips, missing her best friend badly as she and Blankenship finally disembarked the aircraft and stepped out into the bustling main concourse at Sea-Tac. Finding the security office hidden down a long hallway on the way out, Blankenship asked a TSA guard stationed there if he could use a printer. Getting the go-ahead, he plugged in Jarvis’s computer and printed off the transcript of the former youth pastor’s nonsensical ranting.