I stepped back, reaching my hand out to the wall of the cubicle. Maybe I needed the support, but more likely, I just needed something that wasn’t spinning out of control. My thoughts certainly were. And in the midst of them was the image of Constance releasing the switch and the two of them disappearing in a ball of flame.
Marte got up from her chair and walked to the whiteboard, brushing me as she passed. Her eyes never left the monitor. “Dammit,” she said as she pounded the board with an open palm. She turned and walked back to her chair. “How the hell did she get in there?” She paced back to the whiteboard, pounding it again, this time with a closed fist.
“You need to go?” I asked.
Marte turned and stared at me a moment. “No. A bunch of unassigned agents milling around will just make things worse. I’ll wait, be ready for the second wave.”
Silence from the computer cut through the turmoil in my mind, and I looked back at the screen. Constance had stopped the recorder and had raised the dead man's switch as high as the collar and handcuff would allow. Marte moved back to the table. “Easy, Hawkins,” she muttered under her breath as she slumped into her chair. She was holding a hand to her earpiece. At the same instant, the camera zoomed out.
“Who’s the redhead?” I said, moving up beside Marte for a closer look. A woman had appeared at the edge of the picture. Although most at the rally were casually attired, she wore a long, black, sequined evening gown, each tiny disk strobing under the house lights.
“I saw her, earlier today, around the kitchen,” Marte said, confusion clear in her tone. “Not dressed like that but definitely the same woman.”
A man holding some type of shield rushed up behind the woman. Constance yelled, “Back.” She thrust her hand with the switch even higher into the air. The man complied, but the woman actually took a step forward. Conroy began choking again. His head jerked toward the floor with each cough, Constance’s hand being yanked behind. I watched through squinted eyes as the situation teetered on the edge, wondering which cough would finally dislodge her thumb from the dead man's switch.
Constance glanced down at the man and lowered her hand slightly. With the slack, Conroy caught his breath. He looked up at the redheaded woman, tears streaming down his face. “Sheila, get out of here.” His voice was raw, but there was no mistaking his words or the pleading in his eyes. “This isn’t your fight.”
“I can’t just leave you here,” the woman said. All I could see now was her back, but I could hear the tears in her voice. “She’ll listen to me.” The woman slowly raised a hand. “I too have seen the sins of medicine.”
Although the words were directed to Constance, they didn’t get her attention. She was looking down at the floor as if studying the other woman’s feet.
“I’m a living example of the evil of it,” the woman said. “Together, you, Sister Constance, and I can slay this monster if you’ll only let me.” She took a step forward.
Without so much as a flinch, a bat of the eye, Constance released the switch.
Friday, May 10
11:16 AM – The Evangelical Church of the Rock
Mary Jo Eastin hurried through their private living quarters, peering into silent rooms disturbed only by the echoes of her footfalls. Where was her husband? It wouldn’t be like him to go outside and supervise the activities there. He usually let her crack that whip, although motivation wasn’t really the issue. It was order. More than once, she’d had to separate some of them before their actions went beyond posturing. It wouldn’t do to have a fatal riff among the troops.
Finally, she caught sight of his shoulder around the edge of a high-backed, wing chair—in the room she’d just redone. “Comfy, isn’t it?” she asked, coming inside.
“Surprisingly so,” he replied. “And I have to admit, I love the way you’ve organized everything in here. These little—what would you call them—conversation areas? Quite functional.”
She came around his chair and sat in another facing him. He always featured utility in his appraisals of their quarters, but that didn’t bother her. It was important to her as well. “Thanks, honey. You have plenty of places you can stand up in front of a crowd, but for the more intimate talks, hashing out plans and tactics, you can’t beat something like this.” She paused a moment. “And plans and tactics are why I came to find you. Everyone is talking about your last prediction.”
“About Conroy?” he asked.
“Who else?”
“Well, it’s not that difficult when you have—what did you call it before—divine inspiration?” He laughed once, softly. “But just who is everyone?”
“Everyone. Joe Gribbs, Debbie Wells, Marianna Heldman …. Oh, yeah, Layton Tyler. Saw him at the gas station. He said something about being surprised that judgment in this life would be so swift. And so final.” She paused, now considering her words even more carefully. “I’m sure you’ve thought this through, but doesn’t Conroy’s death remove the most vocal supporter for this immoral advance of medicine?”
“Immoral advance of medicine?” he said. She shrugged.
“Nice turn of a phrase,” the Reverend replied to her unspoken question. “It might just turn up in one of my sermons. But to answer your question, no. Conroy was symbolic of this immoral advance, not a perpetrator. I think the ten-dollar-off ad may have spoken to our congregation more than anything I said about Conroy. They need to hear about the real physical assault medical science is making on our souls.”
“And I take it you’re finding some of that?” she asked.
He smiled. “Plenty. I need to dig further, but there are all these new therapies that take the data from RNA and use it to stop what medicine considers genetic abnormalities. Some of the papers even use the phrase, interfering with genetic data. Basically, it’s interfering with God’s plan for our lives.”
“A turn of a phrase you’re considering?” she asked.
“It helps to hear these things out loud,” he admitted. “And all the medicine we’re turning over to machines? There’s research on everything from artificial intelligences interpreting medical scans to robots doing surgery.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But that might be a bit sci-fi for our congregation.”
“Perhaps,” he admitted. “But I think you get the picture. How about I put together some ideas and we can go through them? Things that might stir the souls of our flock? And as long as everything is running smoothly outside, we can even put one of these conversation areas to good use.”
“Yeah, I’d like that.” She beamed at him. They really were a team in this journey. She got up from the chair and left the room, bending down to kiss her husband on the cheek on the way out.
Sunday, May 12
9:31 PM – The Central West End Neighborhood
Iwalked along the street between my apartment and Nicole’s place, my mind where it had been for the last three days—in a downtown, hotel ballroom where Dr. James Conroy, a mysterious redhead, and Sister Constance had died. The scene haunted me, not only due to the death and destruction wrought by the bomb but also because of all the information that didn’t add up. Since when did one plus one make three … or in this case, since when did incinerating oneself in a fiery blast equal just another day at the office?
That was the crux of my disquiet. Constance had appeared completely indifferent to her impending death. And she had to know it was about to happen. She’d laced Conroy up in a lethal vest, she’d held the button that controlled their fate, and she’d released it when her script reached its end. And if there had been any glimmer of hope for survival in her mind, the recording she played would have dispelled that myth.
Faced with this contradiction, I’d first focused on the mysterious redhead—the woman Conroy called Sheila. It seemed unlikely, but perhaps she was the one in control of the bomb. And if Constance hadn’t been privy to that fact, she might have remained calm … or at least as calm as one could surrounded by armed local and federal law enforcement. But i
f Sheila was going to detonate the vest, why had she gotten close enough to kill herself? Could she have underestimated the effective radius of the bomb that much?
The day after the rally, the media made short work of my already flimsy theory that the redhead was in control. They identified the woman as Ms. Sheila Moore, an avid Conroy fan. Or perhaps rabid was a better description. Her infatuation with him had reached the point where Conroy had placed a restraining order on her. Obviously, she was still sneaking into some of his talks. But her appearance in the aftermath of this one was apparently exactly what it seemed—an attempt to save his life.
So, I turned my thoughts back to Constance. I considered the possibility that she had been brainwashed, coming to believe she was doing right, saving the world. But even in the final moments, she was staring at the feet of Moore, not praying fervently for her passage to a better world. If it was brainwashing, someone had scrubbed her gray matter until it was white, and as far as I knew, no one had come up with a formula for that.
I’d also considered drugs, but again, Sister Constance’s behavior didn’t fit. She had moved quickly when the spotlight had hit her. She had surveyed her surroundings clinically, waiting patiently for her plan to unfold. It was Conroy who was unsteady on his feet while Constance held him up with a rock-solid hand. To my eye, she showed no dissociation from time or space; she was in the here and now, methodically working a storyline that had only one end—her demise.
About the only thing that supported the notion that Constance was under the influence of some type of drug was the single command she had yelled—“back.” It had come out a bit garbled, sounding something like Bach, the German composer. But one slightly distorted word didn’t outweigh all the evidence that her senses were sharp, her mind clear.
Perhaps Constance’s pronunciation reflected a foreign accent; I didn’t know, not being much of a linguist. But still, I knew of no foreign country whose citizens blithely went to their death. Being born outside the United States, if she was, said nothing about her sense of self-preservation. All it might explain was why the FBI was having trouble connecting their forensic evidence with a name.
Then, yesterday, I had hatched a variant of the Sheila Moore theory—that someone other than Sister Constance had controlled the bomb, leaving her oblivious to what awaited. If the switch she held was a distraction and the bomb was wired for remote control, all it would take to detonate it was a telephone. As for the killer? It could be anyone. It could be the psychopath watching the television across the street in a bar or in his penthouse in New York or on the beaches of Tahiti. OK, I suppose the cable company’s reach didn’t extend to New York, much less Tahiti, but there were still some 2.8 million suspects in the St. Louis metro area alone. For a numbers guy like me, that fact made my head hurt.
So, I tested my theory as best I could, hoping I could discard it. I found the video of the bombing online and watched it, over and over. If I could detect any discontinuity between the instant Constance raised her thumb and the explosion, it would be evidence that she hadn’t caused it. But I found none. Her motion and the appearance of white noise were simultaneous. If she hadn’t triggered the bomb, the phone connection had been made at precisely the same instant. That was too much of a coincidence for me to accept and given the inconsistencies in connection speed and delays in cell phone service, impossible for anyone to orchestrate.
So, the good news was that there probably weren’t 2.8 million suspects but rather, just Sister Constance. The bad news was, that conclusion got me no closer to understanding what had happened. I was still wondering how one plus one made three.
I looked up, realizing I was standing in front of the door to Nicole’s apartment. I had walked the familiar path from my place to hers noticing nothing, my thoughts some 5 days and 40 blocks away. I wondered if I’d stepped out in front of any oncoming traffic, but that was unlikely. With my tendency to be lost in thought, I’d had a lot of experience with being on automatic pilot, and dangerous events had always pulled me back. At least, as far as I knew they did. The same, of course, couldn’t be said for the beauty of the flowers along my walk, the aroma from the bakery on the corner, the music floating from an open window—nothing like that would ever penetrate my mental space. Sometimes I consciously barred myself from that inner world, concerned with everything I was missing as I tread its unconscious pathways.
I fished the key from my pocket and let myself in. A couple of steps down the short hall and I found my intended sitting in the living room.
My intended.
I still found the thought exciting—and a bit unnerving. The woman I saw before me was such a perfect match to my ideals: intelligent, creative, and cute as hell. Second thoughts found no room in my mind. But what she saw in me? That was the more difficult question.
She was wearing a well-worn, long-sleeve Cardinals t-shirt and faded jeans. Her feet were bare, a fact I knew only because the heel of one poked out from under her. She was twirling a strand of her light brown hair around a finger, as she bent over some puzzle book—sudoku, crossword, jumbles? I could never guess, but she always had something occupying her hands and her mind.
“Hi, babe,” I said.
She said something in reply that I didn’t catch, as she turned a cheek for a kiss. I bent to place one there. The greeting was typical Nicole. When she was involved with something, it got her full and complete attention. No half measures. Thirsty from the walk, I headed toward the kitchen when her voice came from behind me.
“Sam, are you OK?”
I turned back to her. She had placed the book on a side table, and now, I had her attention, although I wondered if it was for the wrong reason. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
“You texted twenty minutes ago that you’d just left your building. It’s a ten-minute walk.” She tilted her head slightly, looking up from the couch. “Are you still thinking about what happened at the Conroy rally?”
“At the moment I’m thinking, after a few more years together, I won’t need to say anything.”
There was a flicker of confusion on Nicole’s face, quickly gone. “Can’t forget about it, huh?”
“No, and I know it’s stupid to keep replaying the attack in my head. The FBI has people much more qualified than me working on it.”
“And you don’t want to call because you have nothing new for them?”
I laughed. “You’re just proving my point. And what am I thinking now?”
Nicole rested her chin on a hand, one finger across her lips. Her eyes were cast upward, forming the perfectly exaggerated, I’m-deep-in-thought pose. “You’re thinking how lucky you are to know me because I’ve got something you can call about. And then, once I tell you, you can forget about all that for an evening.”
“I’m always thinking about how lucky I am to know you. And I know it’s crazy to believe I’d learn anything from the FBI, but …. Well, even hearing they were looking into Constance’s strange behavior would be something. Anyway, what’s this information that warrants a call?”
“Agent Clements was interested in who knew I’d be working with Laura Greenwood. So, I asked my boss, and he finally got back to me today. He said we didn’t send out a press release. However, the decision to have me work with Laura was made over a month ago—April 8—when the contract was first signed, and that information went into the company’s scheduling system. So, how many people knew? Anyone at Biomedical Engineering Associates could have found out.”
I started to say that was worth the call when Nicole raised a finger. “Plus, we ordered a lot of components for the equipment suite Laura wanted. And evidently, every order went out with her signed specifications and my name as the responsible engineer. So, add everyone at six other companies—at a minimum.”
“The FBI is going to love that,” I said. “But it gets my foot in the door.”
“And from there, maybe you can wangle what you want. Or maybe not, but at least you gave it a shot.”
“Absolutely. I’ll call Agent Marte tomorrow.” I paused, thinking about how one-sided the conversation had been. “So, how have things been working out between you and Laura?”
“I’m not sure,” said Nicole. “But come over here and sit beside me while I tell you.”
I never needed to be asked twice. And when I did, Nicole snuggled her head under my chin, resting a hand in my lap. I put my arm around her shoulders.
“Mmm, that’s better.” She raised her head slightly, her eyelashes tickling my neck when she blinked. If this got any more intimate, I’d never be able to concentrate, but she went on with her story.
“Laura asked that I email my questions to her, rather than coming into the office. That, of course, got me concerned. And then, she answered a few of the issues on Thursday but nothing on Friday. I keep thinking that the attempt on her life got to her, but ….”
“But what?” I asked.
“I’m not sure why, but I keep thinking Conroy’s death is weighing heavily on her, too.”
“Could be,” I replied. “You know, I thought I saw her at the rally, just before that Moore woman showed up. But she doesn’t appear in any of the clips I’ve found on the Internet, so maybe I imagined it.”
Nicole nodded; I could feel the motion. “Anyway, the material Laura sent on Thursday didn’t make much sense. I’m going to give her a week or so, let things settle.” Nicole paused a beat, again raising her head slightly against my neck. “So, with that plan, my mind’s clear. How’s yours, now that you’re calling the FBI tomorrow?”
My throat tightened as I realized the possible implications of her question. “Have I been ignoring you?”
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