by Erik Carter
Taft’s eyebrows rose. “The CAE?”
“He helped with the initial funding,” Dale said, “but he was out of the country during the entire time the camp was operational.”
Taft put a hand to his chin. “And the second thing?”
“My mother told me that there were multiple men who stopped by for the background check when I first joined the Bureau.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I was the only one who did your background check.”
“Exactly. Meaning someone’s been following me around since I started with the BEI. Just like how someone’s had this whole abduction at the Marshall Village planned out for over two years.”
“You’re thinking the two are connected?”
“There’s a connection between the Marshall Village’s founder and the Collective Agricultural Experiment, and they know my PI. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
Taft shook his head. “Dammit, Conley. If there was one guy in the Bureau who this whole mess would be tied back to, I could’ve guessed it was you.”
“Since I’m off the case, I’ll just go and write up a quick report and get it to Wilson. Time’s ticking away.” He stuck his hands in his pockets.
Taft took a deep breath. “I don’t like your tactics, Agent Conley.” There was a long pause. “But you get results. What the hell is your next move?”
“Does that mean I’m back on the case?”
“Yes, goddammit!”
Dale smiled. Taft always ended up seeing things his way. “Is the helicopter I requested here? I’m gonna need it. There’s a hunch I need to follow up on.”
Taft scowled. “It’s here. What kind of hunch?”
“I think I know who visited my mother and claimed he was completing my BEI background check. Darnell Fowler.”
“Wasn’t that the creep guard from the CAE? The guy who disappeared?”
Dale nodded. “I’m putting out an APB on Fowler.”
“Christ, Conley.” Taft ran his hand over his face. “I don’t know who’s gonna put me in the grave first, you or Peggy.” He headed for the door.
“Where you going, sir?”
“I need a smoke.”
Chapter 37
It was almost midnight, and Dale was pacing around his motel room. He couldn’t stay up much later. The next day he would be contacted about when he was to find the next group of Marshallites. And he didn’t know how or when that was going to happen.
He had allowed himself half an hour for a jog and some pushups. Otherwise he’d been immersed in his studies of Darnell Fowler. The notion that the Man in Black was Darnell was so outlandish that he didn’t want to believe it. He was doing everything he could to prove himself wrong.
He was shirtless, wearing only his 501s, and he had the air cranked to bring his body temperature back down after his hot shower. He had an old copy of Time in his hand, reading from an article titled “Glenn Downey and the Collective Agricultural Experiment: Greek Tragedy in the Modern World.”
In addition to the earlier escape by Walker, there were eight survivors after the camp’s raid. All have since received extensive psychiatric evaluation, and most are now at least somewhat functional. Nearly all of the camp workers, including Downey himself, died in the gunfights or the fires on the speedboats. One conspicuous omission from this list is Darnell Fowler, the head of Downey’s security forces. Fowler and his men led the camp’s armed resistance to the federal agents in the forest surrounding the camp while the rest of the camp attempted escape on the water. When the guns were silent, all of Fowler’s men were dead, but Fowler himself was never found.
There was a knock at the door.
Dale frowned and looked at the alarm clock. 11:38. Wilson should have gone to bed precisely two hours and thirty-eight minutes earlier. Something must be up. Maybe his iron wasn’t working properly. When Dale looked through the peephole, though, it wasn’t Agent Wilson on the other side.
It was Susan Anderson.
For a moment he couldn’t believe his eyes. This was the last person he would have expected to come knocking on his motel door in the middle of the night. His heart thumped. Sure, maybe she was there to give him an update about Caitlin, but then she could have just called him. That meant she was there for only one reason.
Dale grinned.
His T-shirt was on the chair to his right. He reached for it but then thought better of it. He put his hand on the doorknob, paused, fluffed his chest hair out a bit, and opened the door.
She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. It wasn’t the most overtly sexual of outfits, but the casual look always did the job for Dale. The jeans were bellbottoms, tight with a nice fade to them. She’d gone for the au naturel look, eschewing makeup. Her face showed no trepidation or uncertainty. This girl knew what she wanted.
Dale was pleased. “Well, now … What’s up, doc?”
“May I come in?”
“Sure.” Sometimes Dale felt like the luckiest guy on earth.
He stepped aside, and she walked right in. Her assertiveness was intoxicating.
“How do you do it?” Susan said.
And with that, Dale’s hopes were dashed. Susan’s tone wasn’t arousing. It wasn’t even intriguing. It was concerned, a little scared. This wasn’t going to be the visit he had envisioned.
“I’m sorry?” he said.
“How do you stay so cold? How do you make all those jokes? So flippant. Caitlin earlier …”
Dale could understand why she thought he was cold, but what she didn’t realize was that he wasn’t being flippant. He was putting up a shield. Humor kept the dark reality of his work at bay. If he couldn’t protect himself from the awful things he saw—things like murders and rapes, things like a brainwashed eight-year-old girl—then he wasn’t going to be strong enough to do his job.
“Sometimes jokes are the only way to get through it,” he said.
“But did you see the look on her face? Didn’t you see how scared she was?” Susan’s eyes began to look wet. “When you left, it took her a full ten minutes to stop crying. She told me how they used to control her, how scared she is now.” She looked away and touched the corner of her eye.
“Excuse me, are you crying, Doctor?”
Her eyes flashed back to him. They were indeed crying, tears ready to drop from the corners of each. But now there was some serious rage boiling in those eyes as well. “So what if I am?”
“Well, I gotta say … you’re a pediatrician. Surely you’ve seen some bad stuff. Battered kids. Dead kids. You don’t cry every time, do you?”
Susan’s lips curled back, and she slapped him. Hard. “You smug son of a bitch. Don’t you dare try to understand what I’ve seen in my job.”
The warm, tight, tingling sensation of a lady smack to the face seared into Dale’s cheek. It wasn’t the first time he’d received such a blow. But this wasn’t your typical halfheartedly angry smack. This gal meant business. His face burned.
“Yes, I’ve seen some bad things,” Susan said, “but if you’d heard what she said, if you’d seen the look in her eyes, you wouldn’t be acting so superior.”
She covered her mouth with her hand. The hand began to shake. She breathed deeply two times, releasing the breaths slowly, trying to control herself. Then she cried openly.
Dale was lodged firmly between a rock and a hard place. He’d never known how to deal with women’s tears, and this woman sure seemed to hate him. The best he could do was reach out to touch her shoulder.
She stepped nearer to him, just a little, wanting but not asking to be hugged. He put his other hand on her and slowly pulled her closer. She was tight at first, resistant, but slowly she released her tension and drew nearer to him. She allowed her head to fall onto his chest. Her arms were folded up between them, and she cried harder. Dale hugged her.
The tears quieted, and she looked up. Her eyes were pink, and the wetness magnified the hazel centers, making them look clear and deep. They fixed
on him, blinked. Then she leaned up. Her mouth met Dale’s.
There were tears on her lips, and the taste of saline mixed with that of a thin layer of lipstick. Again, Dale didn’t know what to do. There certainly seemed to be an opportunity presenting itself, but this girl’s heart was in shambles. He’d have to be one heck of a jerk to take advantage of her.
So he let her lead at first. She began with small kisses, gentle movements, her lips slowly gliding over his. Then she became more passionate, and Dale kissed her stronger, putting his hand on her lower back.
Just as he sensed her tongue, her lips began to tremble. She cried again. Dale paused and began to pull away, but she took him by the back of the head and drew him closer.
She reached down and grabbed him hard, squeezing the buttons of his jeans’ fly into him. Maybe it was that her lips were trembling harder now, or maybe it was the pain of the metal buttons tearing into his most sensitive of flesh, but either way Dale knew this had to end. He placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away.
“You don’t want to do this,” he said.
“Yes, I do.” She wiped a tear away and lunged at him.
Dale stepped backwards. “Susan, listen to me. You’ll regret this. And I’m not going to let it happen.”
Susan rubbed her face. She was breathing hard. “I feel like a fool.”
“Don’t.” He motioned to the chairs at the table by the window. “Sit. Please.”
She nodded and slowly sat down. “Thanks, Dale.”
He sat across from her. “You bet.”
A plate of Mrs. Baker’s cookies sat in the middle of the table. They’d polished off a handful of them, and three more remained. Oatmeal raisin. Mrs. Baker had a good handle on the crispy-to-chewy ratio. The cookies were golden brown on top, a little darker on the edges, and moist in the middle.
They’d been chatting for a good ten minutes. Dale now knew that Susan had joined the medical field from a desire to help people. As a child, she wanted to be a nurse, but when she got a little older and women started becoming doctors, her career goals changed. She channeled her own maternal instincts into her studies and pursued pediatrics. Dale could tell she was a kind woman. She’d make a good mother someday.
“And why did you become a federal agent?” Susan said.
Dale took another bite of his cookie. “Because they gave me a shiny badge and a gun.”
“See, there you go again.”
“What?”
“Those little gags of yours. You’re hiding. You don’t want to go head-on with those pesky little human things called emotions.”
“Christ. Are you a pediatrician or a shrink?”
She cocked her head to the side and crossed her arms. She wasn’t going to let him weasel his way out of the question.
“Okay, fine,” Dale said. “I always wanted to do something for my country. To be a military officer. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Vietnam, though, so I dragged my feet. But after I’d had good success with my first job, I said, You know what. I’m doing it. And I did. So I was just about to walk through the doors of a recruiting office when I heard this voice behind me.” He lowered his voice, doing his best to imitate Walter Taft’s gravely tone. “Is this any place for a stinkin’ rich, puzzle-writing, sect-escaping genius?”
Susan raised an eyebrow. “Um … what?”
“Before I became an agent, I was a writer and … Look, it’s not important. The important thing is that I got my chance to serve.”
“You don’t strike me as the federal agent type.”
Dale scoffed. “You’re the second gal who’s told me that recently.”
“Do you even own a suit?”
He wiped some cookie crumbs off the T-shirt he’d put on. “Nope. Can I borrow one of yours?”
Susan chuckled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Stuffy blouses, man pants.”
“Gotta do what you gotta do. It’s tougher being a doctor when you’re a woman.”
“Especially tough in your situation, I’d guess.”
“How do you mean?”
“Having your little brother as your nurse.”
Susan stuck out her tongue and made a gagging noise. “There’s a huge chip on Brian’s shoulder. He always thought he’d be the doctor and I’d be the nurse.”
“Why do you take that treatment from him? He’s your younger sibling and your subordinate. Show him you got some backbone.”
She shook her head. “Backbone wasn’t encouraged among the females in my family.”
“So what? You’re a big girl now. A professional. A doctor.”
“We’re not all as supremely confident in ourselves as you, Dale Conley. What do you suggest?”
“I think you oughta pop him right between the eyes.” He was only half joking. “You’re a good doc. And your work speaks for itself. You don’t need Brian to validate that. You don’t need man pants to validate it either. Don’t let them turn you up into something you’re not. Why don’t you let your hair down?”
He reached across the table, took her hair tie in his hand, and pulled it down the length of the ponytail. Her hair fell down in big waves.
“What do you think?” he said.
Susan looked to her shoulders. “Not bad. Not bad at all.” She put a finger to her chin. “So, you say you’re stinkin’ rich?” She winked.
And they both laughed.
Chapter 38
The Man in Black pulled his car into the gas station parking lot and killed the engine. He couldn’t stay long. It would look suspicious. The gas station had been closed for hours now, and a stray cop could drive by at any minute.
He looked out across the parking lot at the Ashbury Motel. Walker was staying in room seven, and his partner was in room eight. The lights were on in room seven. Burning the midnight oil. How like Brad. His strange sense of guilt-ridden duty would compel him to stay up half the night in hopes of finding the one clue that could make all the difference. His honor was nauseating.
Brad’s car sat right outside his door, the sleek, ostentatious monstrosity that he purchased, no doubt, to announce to the world how much money he’d stumbled upon with the success of his books. The Man in Black had spent the last two years scouring the service manual for De Tomaso Panteras. He was confident he could now disassemble one blindfolded.
Brad’s partner’s car—an odious station wagon of some sort—sat a couple spaces away, and between the two was another car, one the Man in Black hadn’t seen yet on his trips to the motel. It was a Volkswagen Beetle, brown in color. He recognized all the other vehicles, and the motel had no new check-ins as far as he knew.
Curious.
A silhouette appeared against the drapes in room seven. The Man in Black sank down in his seat. There was little chance that Walker would be looking out his window, let alone that he would notice the Man in Black’s car, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The silhouette in the window turned, revealing a second silhouette. There were two people in the room. Brad had wrangled his partner into his late-night, paranoid research. That probably hadn’t gone over well. His partner seemed like the type of man who ironed his socks.
The door to the room opened, and the Man in Black sank further into his seat, peering over the bottom edge of the driver-side window frame. Out of the room came not Walker’s partner but a woman. A beautiful young woman in a sweatshirt and formfitting jeans.
Brad. Same old Brad. Hell, the guy had even made passes at the women at the CAE camp.
An idea came to the Man in Black.
Walker stepped into the doorway. The woman approached the mystery Beetle and opened the door. They exchanged some parting words, and then the woman got in the car and started the engine.
The Man in Black’s pulse quickened. The best part about meticulous planning was that when something new presented itself, it almost always served as an asset not a liability. This new development was certainly an asset.
The woman backed the car ou
t. Walker waved at her and shut his door. The light in the room went out.
“Interesting,” the Man in Black said aloud. “Very interesting indeed.”
Chapter 39
The phone rang at 4:45 in the morning. Dale jumped in startled confusion.
He picked up the receiver. “Conley.” He was acting on instinct. In his sleep-induced haze, he’d forgotten about the phone call he was expecting. A raspy voice on the other end gave him a sudden reminder.
“Go to the place of melodic beginnings. Ten thirty-five a.m.”
Click.
The caller was gone. It had happened so quickly, he hardly had a chance to register it.
Melodic beginnings. Another damn riddle. But this one was a gimme. Melodic = musical. Beginnings = the first colony. An ongoing musical about the Roanoke Colony called The Lost Colony opened in 1937. That year was the 350th anniversary of Roanoke—and, perhaps not coincidentally, the same year the first Dare Stone was found. The play had run continuously since then, telling the story of America’s greatest mystery at an outdoor amphitheatre in the town of Manteo, North Carolina, on Roanoke Island.
At the jail, Marshall had said Dale would find the next group of Marshallites at a “performance.” A trip to North Carolina was in order.
The deadline was 10:35, and a drive to Manteo would be about five hours, which allowed just enough time for Dale to get there. The timing of the Man in Black’s phone call had been meticulous. However the creep didn’t know that Dale had a helicopter waiting for him back at the Sheriff’s Office. Dale now had a distinct advantage.
The voice had come and gone so fast that Dale wasn’t able to fully process it. But he thought he heard the accent. Darnell’s accent. Carolina Southern. Or had he imagined it?
Dale quickly threw on his 501s and a shirt and pounded on Wilson’s door. There was the sound of Wilson fumbling with the door on the other side before he opened it. He wore a T-shirt and white briefs, and he was rubbing the sleep out of his tired-looking eyes.