The screen door to the porch opened. Maggy and Claire returned.
“Found it,” Claire said. She handed Mark the business card. “I’m sure the Inspector will give you all the information you need.”
“Thank you,” Mark said as he took the card. “I’ll phone him first thing in the morning. But right now, if you’ll excuse me, I still have a few reports to review before I can call it a day. Are you planning on staying over, Martin?”
“Yes,” Martin replied. “I want to review our files on The Brethren with Justin in the morning.”
“Good idea,” Mark said. “We need to gather as much intel on this group as we can. Tell Justin to concentrate on this Krebeck fellow and to search for any links he may have to other groups besides The Brethren.”
“What can I do to help?” Claire asked.
“I’d like you to work with Martin and Justin,” Mark said. “Review the information they come up with on Krebeck. See if anything catches your attention. I’d also like to borrow your file on Pennimore and study it tonight, if that would be all right.”
“No problem.”
“Excellent,” Mark said. He stood. “Well, tomorrow’s looking like it’s going to be a busy day. I suggest you both get a good night’s sleep.”
“Goodnight, Mark,” Martin said. “Get on with your reports. I’ll show Claire to her room.”
“Thank you, Mark,” Claire said.
Mark smiled. “Don’t mention it.”
31
MARTIN AND CLAIRE sat alone on the veranda in the pale moonlight. A symphony of cicadas buzzed among the cypress trees.
“Mark seems like quite a guy,” Claire said.
Martin nodded. “He’s the best.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Ten years.”
“How did you meet?”
“Mark offered to help with my investigation into Anne and Melanie’s disappearance.”
“He strikes me as a man very dedicated to his work.”
“Believe me, Mark is the Bureau, through and through. I’ve met no one else with the conviction for helping people that he has. Mark is doing exactly what he was born to do, and he does it very well. I don’t think there’s anything else he could do, even if he wanted to. When I came up with the idea for this place, I immediately knew who I wanted to run it.”
“He quit the FBI to come here?”
“In a manner of speaking. Mark was still with the Bureau, but he was eligible for early retirement. Like many other organizations, they were going through a period of rightsizing. They wanted young blood, fresh ideas, less grey hair. Mark and I met for lunch one day. He told me they’d made him a lucrative offer to accept an early retirement package. The only catch was it was a limited time offer. He had two weeks to either take the package and retire comfortably with full benefits or pass on it and take his chances on being laid off within a few years.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a choice.”
“It wasn’t. Mark’s a proud man and a total professional. He wasn’t about to have a successful career end abruptly one day because he turned down the offer. I offered him the position as director of this center, and he accepted.”
“Still, it must have been a difficult transition,” Claire said. “To go from the FBI to working in the private sector.”
“Yes, and no. Over the years, the Bureau had taken its toll. Mark was special agent in charge of Domestic Terrorism for four years before he packed it in. He’d seen a lot in that time. It’s not an easy job. You’re privy to a world of secret information most of us wouldn’t even want to know about. When the country goes to sleep at night, people don’t worry about going to work the next day and becoming the innocent victim of a poison gas attack in a subway train station or being blown to bits at their office by some anarchist whack job. It was Mark’s job to be sure the fanatics behind that way of thinking never got the chance to make their point. Yet even with all the intelligence gathering and resources the Bureau has available to them, things can still go wrong. Unfortunately, in Mark’s particular case, all hell broke loose one morning in Oklahoma City.”
“My God,” Claire said. “The bombing of the Federal Building.”
“That’s right. Mark was to have been at the office that morning to attend a seminar, but his wife had been rushed to hospital with a ruptured appendix, so they excused him. Everyone who was in that seminar room at 9:02 a.m. was killed when Timothy McVeigh drove a van packed with fertilizer and fuel oil to the front of the building and detonated it. Emergency services pulled one hundred and sixty-nine bodies from the rubble that day, even children from the daycare center inside the building. Hundreds more were injured in the blast.”
“But Mark can’t blame himself for their deaths,” Claire said. “He had no way of knowing what was going to happen.”
“You’re right,” Martin said. “He shouldn’t feel responsible, but he does. It goes deeper than that. Let me explain. Go back two years, before the bombing in Oklahoma. Do you remember what happened in Waco, Texas?”
“The FBI raided some kind of religious group.”
Martin nodded. “It was a compound for an anti-government sect that called themselves the Branch Davidians. Their leader was a fanatic named David Koresh. I wrote about them in my book, An Unholy Path. Mark oversaw that raid. His team was to have executed a no-knock warrant with the help of the ATF, who had reason to believe the group was stockpiling weapons. Right out of the gate they met with armed resistance. Shots were fired, and from that moment on things went from bad to worse. The result was a standoff that lasted for the next fifty-one days. When Mark finally decided it was time to put an end to the ordeal he ordered in HRT, the Bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team. Together with ATF agents, they stormed the grounds. By the time it was over, the Branch Davidian compound had been burned to the ground and four ATF agents were dead. Eighty other men, women, and children trapped inside the buildings within the compound died as well, either during the assault or from the fire, including Koresh. Because Mark was the agent in charge of the HRT assault, the Office of Professional Responsibility, which is the FBI’s internal affairs department, took him to the mat for the actions he took that day.”
“What happened?”
“Eventually, nothing. Mark was cleared of any improper conduct. But the OPR investigation was extremely hard on him. They had set a committee up to investigate the incident. They tried to tag him with use of excessive force and not following the FBI’s rules of engagement. Some higher-ups blamed Mark personally for the deaths of those agents, which of course was crap. But that was just the beginning. They really put his feet to the fire when it came out that the bombing in Oklahoma City two years later had been sanctioned by the Branch Davidians. Turns out it was payback for Waco. The brass believed if Mark had handled things differently at Waco, Oklahoma might never have happened.”
“So that’s when he left the FBI?”
“Yes. That’s when I told him about my plans to start this organization. By then he’d had enough of the bureaucracy of the Bureau and had been giving thought to retiring. I guess the timing was right. He took the package and my offer the same day. It’s been four and a half years and we haven’t looked back since.”
“You both should be immensely proud of yourselves,” Claire said. “You’re making a difference, helping people. That’s an admirable way to live your life.”
“Thanks, but if we didn’t do it, somebody else would. Mark and I both have our independent motivations. In my case, I want to help the families of the Anne’s out there whose lives have been ripped to pieces by people like Krebeck. And though it’s not for me to say, I think Mark does this for the people who died at Waco and Oklahoma City. He may seem like a strong guy on the outside, everything always under control, but I know the inner torture he deals with every day. He keeps a folder in his desk drawer filled with pictures and newspaper articles about the incidents at Waco and Oklahoma. I came across it one day when he asked me to get a fi
le for him. I mentioned nothing to him about it, didn’t even bring it up. That he keeps it close at hand tells me it’s there for a reason.”
“He’s internalized the responsibility for their deaths. He never wants to allow himself to forget what happened.”
“That sounds like Mark. Carrying the burden of the world on his shoulders.”
“It’s more than that,” Claire said. “It’s not healthy for him, or you, to assume that guilt. You both need to put what happened behind you and move on with your lives.”
“We both know that’s a lot easier said than done.”
“I agree,” Claire said. “But you need to take consolation from the fact that you’re doing all you can. To accept any less is simply unfair. Look around you, Martin. This organization you’ve created, the people who work for it, the many lives you’ve saved, the families you’ve reunited. These are the successes you and Mark need to celebrate every day. It’s that file of memories Mark needs to keep stored in his desk drawer, not of lives lost for reasons beyond his control. Those positive events should be the motivators that drive you and give meaning to what you do and why you do it, not the negative events of the past. The past is valuable to us for only one reason. It gives us a baseline for how we’re going to deal with today. That’s all.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Martin said thoughtfully. “I guess our natural tendency is to dwell on the bad things that happen to us and not the good. It’s easier to accept our failures than our successes.”
“That’s a reflection of the competitive world we’re living in. And when you’ve chosen a career that focuses on mastering an acute understanding of the worst in people like Mark has, it’s easy to become jaded. To see the darkness instead of the light.”
Martin smiled. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a very smart lady, Dr. Prescott?”
Stunned by Martin’s sudden compliment, Claire found she could only smile. She wanted to respond, but the look in Martin’s eyes captivated her, stole her words.
“Has anyone also told you how incredibly beautiful you are?” Martin said.
Those eyes, Claire thought. He could melt her with those eyes. Here she was, a grown woman, staring into the eyes of a man she had known less than twenty-four hours, as speechless and weak-kneed as a teenager on her first date. There was an undeniable quality about him that mesmerized her. She had seen it in his picture the night before at the gala. Martin had the unique ability to communicate his thoughts and emotions with the cast of his gaze. She knew that his heart was speaking directly to hers. He closed his eyes and leaned forward, pressed his lips softly to hers. She felt his hand on the small of her back, cradling her, drawing her closer. Her arms found their place around his back as naturally as if they had been doing so for a lifetime.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since I first laid eyes on you,” Martin confessed. “But now, I have to admit, I’m scared to death to know what you’re thinking.”
Claire took Martin’s hands in hers, brought them to her chest, and smiled.
“I’m glad you did,” she said.
32
MARK’S CHAIR SIGHED as he sat down. He propped his feet up on the corner of his desk, unscrewed the cap from a bottle of water he had taken from the kitchen, took a sip, removed the business card Claire had given him from his pocket, picked up the phone, and dialed the number. The call picked up on the first ring.
“Homicide. Maddox speaking.”
“Inspector, my name is FBI Special Agent Retired Mark Oyama. I’m calling from Sacramento on behalf of Dr. Claire Prescott. Do you have a few minutes to speak with me?”
“Certainly, Agent Oyama,” Maddox said. “You say you’re calling from Sacramento. Is everything okay with Dr. Prescott?”
“She’s fine,” Mark replied. “I’m working with her on a missing person’s case. I told her I wanted to reach out to you on matters which could be important to my investigation. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“Fire when ready.”
“According to Dr. Prescott, you were the primary on the incident at the Mendelson clinic. Is that correct?”
“I was.”
“What can you tell me about Joseph Krebeck?”
Maddox sounded puzzled. “Krebeck? No one by that name was involved with the Mendelson situation, Agent Oyama. Just Clarence Demmings, the security guard who saved her life, and Dr. Prescott’s patient, Walter Pennimore. But no Krebeck, I’m afraid.” The inspector paused for a moment. “Wait. The day after the attack at Mendelson, Dr. Prescott mentioned Pennimore told her some cockamamie story about her parents being killed. Murdered, actually.”
“Go on.”
“According to Pennimore, some guy named Kre was responsible for their death. I ran the partial through our computers and checked it out as a first name, last name, or known aliases. I came up empty. Personally, I think the good doctor was taking this Pennimore guy way too seriously. He was a psych patient and a child molester. A real waste of skin.”
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t telling the truth,” Mark interjected.
“True enough,” Maddox agreed. “But my understanding of Pennimore from the interviews conducted with clinicians and staff led me to believe he was extremely unstable. Voices in his head, hallucinations, that sort of thing. Besides, we scoured the accident scene where Dr. Prescott’s parents were killed. It was a car crash in case you weren’t aware. Dr. Prescott’s father lost control of his vehicle, launched it off a cliff, and had a serious disagreement with the rocks below. He and his wife were killed on impact. Eyewitness reports taken at the scene confirmed our findings. It was an accident, case closed. Dr. Prescott was there. She witnessed the whole thing. It’s all in my report. I can FedEx a copy to you in the morning if you would like to review it.”
“Wait a second,” Mark replied. “You said Dr. Prescott was there, that she saw the crash?”
“Not the crash itself, no. But she did witness the car leave the cliff and the explosion that followed. Like I said, it’s all in the report.”
“I think reviewing your report might be helpful after all,” Mark said. “But let’s go back to Krebeck for a minute. You turned up nothing on him?”
“Not in our database. I told Dr. Prescott I’d make a few additional inquiries though and call some friends in the Bureau as a courtesy to her. Looks like she beat me to it.”
“Sounds to me like you’ve done all you can, Inspector. If I need to check back with you…”
“Don’t hesitate to call,” Maddox finished. “My office will be more than happy to assist you with your investigation. I’ll have that file sent off to you in the morning.”
“I’d appreciate that. Thanks.”
Mark gave the inspector his address and hung up the phone. He thumbed through page after page of Pennimore’s file, looking for something that might jump out at him, a clue in the report, a notation.
“What do you know that I don’t, Walter?” he said aloud as he flipped through the pages. Pennimore’s picture had been stapled to the inside cover of the file folder. He pulled it off and stared into the dead man’s eyes. A lifetime of professional experience had given him a master’s degree in intuition. The longer he stared at Pennimore’s photo, the louder the little bell inside his head rang that told him something was wrong. Pennimore’s eyes spoke to him.
Oyama put the picture back into the file, closed the cover, took a final swig of water, and tossed the empty bottle into the wastebasket.
“Accident, my ass,” he muttered.
33
“DON’T YOU EVER leave this place?” Cynthia Rowe joked as she entered the computer lab, her short blonde hair bobbing up and down as she crossed the room. Her skin-tight leather pants accentuated every curve of her long shapely legs, and the suppleness of the leather crinkled with every step. Over her shoulder she carried a leather knapsack, which she tossed to the floor beside Justin’s chair. She untied the long sleeve yellow sweater she wore draped over her shoulders
and wrapped it around her waist.
Justin barely looked up. He kept tapping away on the computer keyboard, watching the screen as he scrolled through an internet search. “That would require having a life,” he replied. “Too busy trying to catch the bad guys, I guess. Anyway, what are you doing here? I thought you were working an intelligence op upstate.”
“Wrapped it up,” Cynthia said. She nudged the knapsack with her foot. “I’ve got three memory cards in here that need to be downloaded, asap.”
“Run away with me to the Caribbean and I’ll have them ready for you in five minutes.”
Cynthia smiled. “How about I buy you dinner instead? What do you say, boy genius? Fajitas and a pitcher?”
“That’s hardly a compromise,” Justin replied, a hint of mock disappointment in his voice. “And stop calling me boy genius! I’m more than a brilliant mind, you know. You really should re-think my Caribbean offer. Besides, you’d look totally hot in a…”
Cynthia gave him a friendly poke in the side, then mussed his hair with her fingers. “Throw some ice on it, Romeo,” she said. She wrapped her arms around him in a friendly hug, pressed her cheek to his, and stared at the computer screen. “Whatcha working on?”
Justin sighed and rolled his eyes. “Sure. Get me all hot and bothered. Just my luck. I finally meet the girl of my dreams and she’s all business.”
“Speaking of business…”
“Okay, okay. A new client arrived today. Dr. Claire Prescott. She’s a friend of Martin’s. A real hottie too!”
“I’m festering with jealousy,” Cynthia joked. “What’s the doc’s story?”
“Her sister disappeared years ago, but we think we’ve got a lead on her already. Seems she’s mixed up with a cult called The Brethren. Ever heard of them?”
Cynthia shook her head. “Nope.”
“I’m not surprised. They’re pretty low key. The top man has got a rather nasty rep though.”
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