Dark River Rising

by Roger Johns

  TWENTY-FIVE

  12:10 P.M.

  Don flinched at the sight of the police car parked in front of Carla’s house. He immediately turned off her street and meandered through the neighborhood. Why would the police be here? He knew Carla hadn’t escaped or been discovered. He had stopped to check on her, not fifteen minutes ago. She was still in the attic in the abandoned house and she was still completely out of it from the sedatives he had fed her last night. If his calculations were correct, she should be out for at least another six hours.

  As far as he could tell, no one knew he was in the picture, so he couldn’t think of a reason why anything that had happened so far could be connected to him. And there was precious little in the house that he needed to worry about. He had been careful to put things back the way he found them in the dining area where he and Carla had spent their time together.

  A forensic examination of the house would reveal that someone other than Carla had been there, but it would be a long time, if ever, before anyone could link that sort of evidence to him. No official samples of his hair or genetic material existed. His fingerprints were part of his profile at DEA, but he hadn’t left any prints behind—of that he was certain.

  Perhaps the police car out front was just the local constable doing his due diligence on Matt’s missing person report. Don would circle back every so often until the car was gone. Then he would leave his own vehicle close enough to allow a speedy getaway and go the rest of the way on foot. If need be, he could always commandeer whatever vehicle Matt arrived in. Assuming Matt even showed up.

  On his second drive-by, the police car was gone. On his third drive-by, with no other obvious busybodies in sight, Don assumed the coast was clear. He parked two blocks away, then walked briskly toward the entrance to the central alley behind Carla’s house. The collection of devices he had taken from Carla on his earlier visit rattled around inside his shoulder bag.

  He checked his watch, then picked up his pace. Time was running short. He had wanted to be in position long before Gable arrived, but the presence of the police car had chewed away some of his margin of safety.

  Just as he turned into the alley, an elderly woman emerged from a gate farther down and waddled slowly up the alley in Don’s direction. She wore a ratty flower-print house coat and dingy white terry cloth slippers that barely contained a pair of record-setting bunions. A bleary-eyed basset hound that looked older than the woman lollygagged alongside on a retractable leash, sniffing out a place to relieve itself.

  Don didn’t have enough time to saunter past the woman and out the other end of the alley and then come back after she was gone. But he couldn’t afford to register on the old woman’s radar, either. He wanted to be invisible, so he acted as if he belonged there and strode confidently to the fence line at the back of Carla’s yard and used her key to unlock the gate. The woman showed no interest in him. She seemed concerned only with her dog, muttering impatiently to the animal—probably some practiced incantation intended to hasten the evacuation of its bowels.

  Once inside the fence, Don went straight into the house, then shot a quick glance back at the alley through the window in the door. The old woman with the dog was nowhere in sight. A quick survey of the rooms told him the house was empty. He made sure all the windows were locked and that the front door was bolted and chained. Matt might have a key and, if he showed up, he might try to enter through the front. Don needed to funnel him toward the back door.

  On his way back out, Don applied a strip of duct tape across the striker plate to keep the spring bolt from latching. The tape also provided enough bulk to barely hold the door shut. A gentle touch was all it took to push it open.

  Don hurried down the back steps and across the yard. He gently slid open the door to the storage shed and ducked inside. The little window in the side wall of the shed offered a view of the gate and the sycamore tree at the back of the lot. He left the door open so he would also have a clear view of the back of the house, then he settled in behind a lawn mower. Even with the door open, it was sweltering inside the shed. He would have preferred to wait in the house, where it was cooler, but he couldn’t afford to get cornered in the event the nosy policeman returned or Matt showed up with company.

  By making it impossible for Matt to communicate with Carla or to even determine whether it was actually her who was sending him the ominous emails, Don had left Matt no choice but to return to Bayou Sara if he wanted to reclaim what he believed Carla had taken from him.

  He knew Matt would suspect a trap, and that Matt would want to study the situation before making a commitment—as he had done with his two-motel scheme in Baton Rouge. But he felt confident that Matt wouldn’t want to watch from in front of the house. Inquisitive neighbors or Carla herself might see him. The tree and the shed in the back were the only real options. But Matt would avoid the shed. It would be too difficult to abort the mission if he had to exit the shed, run across the open backyard, and then get through a locked gate. From the tree, however, Matt could simply drop over the fence into the alley, leaving any pursuers to wrestle with the locked gate.

  Ever the thinker, though, Don acknowledged the gentle tug of anxiety. Sometimes people behaved in unexpected ways. Mason had been reliably habit-bound for years, keeping his nose in the numbers and his butt glued to his office chair. But then, very much against the odds, Mason unexpectedly broke his usual pattern and showed up in Baton Rouge. Don hoped he would not be similarly disappointed by Matt Gable.

  TWENTY-SIX

  BATON ROUGE 12:15 P.M.

  Wallace was trying hard to keep her mind on the conversation with Lex and Jack, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Colley and Mason and the things Connie had told her.

  “Jack’s writing a book that he’s too shy to mention. You should ask him about it,” Lex prodded, evidently noticing the drift in Wallace’s attention.

  “So,” Wallace said, without skipping a beat, “how’s your book going?”

  “Like a tortoise on Prozac. But I persevere because I think it’s an important topic.”

  “Which is…?” Wallace asked.

  “The problems I see with the very antiscientific notion of Intelligent Design.”

  “One of the arguments against Darwin and evolution?” Wallace asked.

  “Many in the religious community find it appealing because they believe it eliminates the need to consider evolution. But, in the end it will prove very damaging to religion in general and to its supporters in specific.”

  “How so?” Wallace asked. She turned toward the priest, giving him her undivided attention.

  “Well, you know, it rests on the idea that life simply could not have arisen from the blind obedience of matter and energy to the fundamental forces that govern the universe.”

  “It does seem rather insulting to God to say that he couldn’t have designed a system that would produce his intended results over some enormously long period of time.”

  “Beyond that there’s a practical flaw in the whole idea. Before long, some scientist somewhere is going to cook up a living organism in the lab from completely inert ingredients. It’ll be primitive, but it’ll be able to sustain itself by extracting molecules from its environment and modifying them to meet its metabolic needs. After that, it will be absolutely indisputable that mere human intelligence is sufficient to the task of intelligent design. That permanently crowds out the idea that a supernatural intelligence is required to create life. The whole concept of intelligent design is a theological cul-de-sac.”

  “Do you really believe that humans will discover a way to synthesize a living creature?” Lex asked, dishing some salad onto his plate.

  “Many are close, as we speak,” Jack said. “And, of course, as soon as the first one’s done, just like computers, and cars, and cell phones, improvements will be rapid.”

  “Won’t that undermine all religion, not just the idea of intelligent design?” Wallace asked.

  “I don’t think
so,” Jack said. “And, it’s a question of scale and order, really. It’s one thing to be able to replicate a feature of your universe—like living creatures. It’s quite another to be able to create the universe itself. An existing egg may produce a new chicken, but that existing egg can’t produce the preceding chicken that laid it.”

  Wallace laid her fork on the side of her plate. “Lex, I’m sorry, but I have to go.” Her eyes were focused on some faraway point.

  “Was it something I said?” Lex asked, trying to be funny.

  “No, it was something Jack said.”

  “Wallace, please, I hope I didn’t offend—”

  “Far from it. You’ve actually helped me. I’ll explain, later,” she said, hurrying for the door. “Jack, it was wonderful to meet you. Have a safe trip. Lex, I’ll call, I promise,” she said, her thoughts already miles away.

  Wallace tried to remain calm, as everything tumbled into place. She dialed Connie’s number as she hustled down the front steps of the house.

  “That lab setup you tested already,” Wallace began, the moment Connie answered, “you tested something from the output end of the process, right?”

  “That’s what you said you wanted.” Connie sounded exasperated.

  “Well, now I need you to test something from the very beginning, from the input end.”

  “Okay, but I can tell you right now what I’m going to find.”

  “I don’t think so. And listen, keep this quiet. Not one word to a blessed soul,” she said, slipping into her car and pulling away from Lex’s.

  “Why all this cloak-and-dagger?”

  “Sometimes just knowing something is risky, especially if other people know you know.”

  As soon as she hung up, Wallace called the evidence tech who was handling the reassembly of Matt’s lab apparatus to let him know that Connie Butterworth would be coming down to collect a sample and that Carla would not be returning any time soon.

  “It doesn’t matter that she won’t be back” the tech said. “Her contribution would be moot, at this point, anyway.”

  “You got it up and running without her?” Wallace asked.

  “We’ve got nothing at all. After you left this morning, a change of custody order arrived. We had to pack up everything and make it available for a transfer into federal custody.”

  “What? Where did that order come from?”

  “Hang on,” he said. “The Intelligence Division in the DEA.”

  “Whose name is on the order?” Wallace snapped.

  “No name. Just the agency. But the order was authenticated before it came to me.”

  “That bastard. I can’t believe he would do this to me. Where is everything now?”

  “In the evidence room.”

  “Transfer me.”

  As the transfer rang through she hoped that Monica Simon, the head of the evidence room, would be out and that one of her assistants would pick up instead. Monica had an uncanny sense of how to get under the skin of virtually anyone who pressed her too hard. She was tone deaf to the idea of pleasant cooperation, but she had perfect pitch when it came to the line between irritation and insubordination. And Wallace, like others on the force, had gotten crossways with Monica when time constraints led to demands that Monica deemed uncongenial to her preferred style and pace of work. The phone seemed to ring forever. Wallace pictured the custodians being too busy to answer the phone because they were politely and carefully handing over all of her evidence to Mason and his comrades.

  “Evidence. This is Monica Simon.”

  “Monica, this is Detective Hartman. I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, Detective Hartman, it seems like every time we talk there’s a bit of a dustup comin’, if you know what I mean. But, I’m willin’ to let bygones be bygones. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m calling about a batch of evidence that was subject to a change of custody order just this morning. It was glassware and other laboratory items that were taken into evidence on the Ronald Overman homicide. The case number—”

  “I know the items you’re talking about,” Monica interrupted.

  “Is the evidence still in your possession?”

  “Technically, it’s in the possession of the State Police, not me personally, but it’s still within the physical confines of the evidence room, if that’s what you’re asking,” Monica drawled.

  Wallace could sense a lecture coming on about the fine points of state-to-federal evidence transfer regulations.

  “But you gotta understand. Once we got that order, things changed,” Monica continued, never one to underdeliver when it came to doling out the greatest amount of information when one had the least amount of time to listen. “We may presently maintain actual possession, but the material subject to that order falls within the constructive possession of the federal government. You see what I’m sayin’? As a consequence, we hold it strictly as their agent.”

  “Who issued the order? Not the agency, the person?”

  “I don’t have that information.”

  “Can you find out?” Wallace asked, struggling to keep her composure.

  “There’s no standard procedure for doing somethin’ like that. That doesn’t necessarily mean it couldn’t be done, but—”

  “Does the order state when the feds are going to pick it up?” Wallace asked.

  “It does.”

  Monica was going to make Wallace drag it out of her piece by piece. Breeding frustration in others seemed to be Monica’s drug of choice, and once she sensed that she had it, she worked it like a morphine drip.

  “When, then?” Wallace asked, offering up a quick prayer to the patron saint of patience.

  “Noon.”

  “It’s already past that.”

  “Well, the order specifies a must-be-ready-by time, not the time the pickup will happen. It’s always possible, of course, that those times could be—”

  “I need you to keep the pickup from happening,” Wallace said.

  “Say what?”

  “I need you to unpack everything.”

  “Oh Jesus God in heaven,” Monica spewed. “How did I know something like this was gunna happen just the minute I heard your voice when I picked up the phone?”

  Just as she was wondering if there was a patron saint of justifiable homicide, her phone signaled an incoming call from Mason. “Monica, please—”

  “You know I can’t stop it just on your say-so. And besides, have you got any idea how long it takes to pack up about a bajillion little pieces a glass and other assorted gizmos, all done in the strictest adherence to state and federal evidentiary chain-of-custody protocols? And now it’s got to be unpacked and returned to inventory without breaking the chain?”

  “The paperwork will be on your desk as soon as I can get it there. I’m headed your way now. I just need you to make sure nothing leaves the building.”

  “As you wish, Detective Hartman, although I gotta say, this is not gunna go a long way toward building a strong sense a comma roddery between us. And I’m just sayin’ … if the federal marshal gets here before your stop order does, I’m gunna have to turn the stuff over. I got no authority to do otherwise.”

  “And I’m just sayin’, unpack the goddamn crates,” Wallace hissed into the phone. “Your job is to do what needs to be done. This isn’t about what suits you. Got it?”

  “Loud and clear, Detective, loud and clear.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  12:18 P.M.

  As soon as Mason had hung up on Whitlock, he had called his own boss to tell him what he knew about Don. From there, a notification was sent to the FBI, and a plan for apprehending Don set in motion. But it was going to take time. The first thing they would do was see if they could track Don’s phone. The special agent in charge of the Baton Rouge office called Mason and gave him the name of a contact in the office and set up a communication protocol in case Mason came into possession of useful information. />
  As for tracking down Carla, that would be a matter for the local authorities. Neither the FBI nor the DEA had jurisdictional authority to act—something Mason already knew. He had not intended to call Wallace unless Whitlock reported that something was definitely wrong. But sitting and waiting was causing his anxiety to lurch into overdrive, so he called her anyway. When she didn’t answer, he thought about getting a rental car, but the man at the desk downstairs told him it would take two hours to have a car sent over. Mason was on the verge of calling a taxi when Whitlock finally called back.

  “Is she okay?” Mason asked.

  “Don’t know,” Whitlock responded. “She’s not home. The back door was unlocked, so I went in for a quick look-see. The place appears to be a normally occupied residence. No sign of foul play. And lots of folks around here aren’t compulsive door-lockers, so the open back door may not mean much. Looks to me like she’s just out.”

  “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”

  “We’ll start checking with her employer…”

  “Former employer,” Mason interjected. “She was fired yesterday.”

  “Okay. Former employer. We’ll check with the neighbors, see if we can locate any friends she might be with. I’ve got her telephone number from the missing person report she filed on Gable, and we’ve been calling it. So far there’s no response.”

  “What about her car? Have you—”

  “It wasn’t at her place, but that by itself doesn’t mean anything either. As I’m sure you’re well aware, when people are at Point A but find they need to go to Point B, they have been known to make use of their automobile to accomplish that type of task. So, are you gonna tell me what’s got your hair on fire over this? We’re a small department and you folks are stretching us a bit thin. Even I’m gonna be out of pocket starting in about ten minutes. Now I’m guessing this has something to do with whatever it was you saw in those videos, so you can start right there.”