by Brad Kelln
Wa let that sink in before he spoke again. "So what happened to this Nick Stangos guy?"
"Oh, Nick," Gary said. "I really don't know. I was leaving on a trip to Qumran in the Judaean desert for a grad school expedition, and about a week before I left, Nick was kicked out of seminary."
"Wait a minute, did you say Qumran?"
The pastor looked startled. "Yes."
Wa's voice shook. "What's Qumran?"
"Qumran?" The pastor was still confused by the sudden shift. "Nothing. Don't worry about it. Just some stuffy biblical thing."
"I've heard that word before. A couple of times when I thought I was hal- lucinating or something. It's so bizarre to hear you say it. What is it?"
"You hallucinated and heard'Qumran'?"
"Yeah, I guess. What is it?"
Gary didn't respond right away. He was obviously weighing this all out in his mind. Finally he spoke in a careful, almost rehearsed way. "I guess it couldn't hurt to give you the academic thirty-second talk." He smiled awkwardly. "The Qumran ruins are a series of structures near the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered."
"The Dead Sea Scrolls. I've heard of them. That's where the Bible comes from?"
Gary shook his head. "Not really. The Scrolls weren't discovered until 1947 and only then by accident. A young Bedouin shepherd, searching for a stray in the Judaean desert, entered a cave and found jars filled with scrolls. At that time there were only seven scrolls, but over the course of almost a decade of excavation, thousands of scroll fragments were found from eleven different caves in the area."
"So the Scrolls were copies of the Bible?"
"Well, yes and no. Some of the jars definitely contained early versions of the Bible-very early versions. The Qumran site and the Scroll Jars have been dated to almost the exact time of Jesus Christ. These are the earliest biblical writings ever discovered. Some suggest that the writings may have been by Jesus and the twelve disciples themselves that were inspired directly by God.
The unfortunate part is that only bits and pieces of the Scrolls could be recovered. The centuries that passed took a heavy toll."
Wa grunted. "That doesn't explain why I heard the word 'Qumran.' What's that got to do with anything?"
"I don't think I'm the person to help you with that."
Wa shook his head. "Let's get back to what you were saying before. You said this Nick character was kicked out of seminary?"
The pastor nodded. "Right. I guess the administration got wind of his secret experiments with the extreme low frequency beams and shut him down. It was considered a major breach of ethics."
"So he actually had some kind of weapon to test?"
"Well, sort of. I think I'm the only person he ever actually used it on. He was caught trying to get other volunteers."
"He tried the thing on you?"
Gary smiled. "Yes."
Wa shrugged. "Did it do anything?"
"I'm still here, aren't I?"
Wa nodded. "That's quite the story, pastor. Quite the story."
"What should I do then?" Wa finally asked. "I mean if something really is screwed up in my head."
The pastor pulled in a deep breath. "You need to talk to a professional."
Wa nodded. It was last thing he wanted to do and yet it was what he expected right from the start. He needed to talk to someone and he knew exactly who that was going to be. There was only one choice. There was only one person common to all of the pain and suffering. He stood to leave.
"Oh, can I get your number? Just in case I think of something else," Gary asked.
Wa quickly gave him his cell phone number. He was eager to leave. Wa thanked the pastor for the help and headed back to his car.
Sitting inside his Saturn, Wa pulled his phone out and dialed a number. The phone had just started to ring as he drove out of the church parking lot.
Pastor Wrightland stood in the doorway of the church and watched Wa go. He was focused so intently that his eyes didn't even blink. He kept watching until long after there was nothing to see.
THIRTY-ONE
"I'm sorry, Norma," Wenton said as he returned to a chair next to her. He hoped that Marion hadn't seen Norma in his office.
"Did you answer my phone?" he asked.
Norma looked to the phone on the desk and nodded.
Wenton was not happy about that. "Who called?"
She licked her lips before responding, something Wenton found quite distracting. "Some cop named Wa. He wants to talk to you tonight at the Fireside Room."
"Is that all he said?"
Norma stared at him blankly.
"What's the matter?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
She's acting so fuckin' weird, Wenton thought. Fuck. He'd called her there to see if he could persuade her to drop the academic misconduct charges against him. It didn't look promising. He decided to try a new tact.
"Norma," Wenton urged, "I'm so sorry about the other night. I'm under so much stress with everything. I literally had some kind of breakdown. It won't happen again."
"Oh," she said solemnly and looked away from him. She obviously had no intention of making anything easy for him.
"Can't we try again?" Wenton urged.
She didn't answer.
Wenton leaned closer. "Norma?" Answer me you bitch.
Suddenly her eyes flooded with tears. "Back away. Please." She stood and stepped away from him.
What's up with her? "Don't be like that. We need to be professional. I really want to work with you."
"Please," she said, covering her eyes. "I'm dirty." She didn't want to look at him again. "I should go."
"Norma," Wenton barked. "What's the matter with you?"
"I don't know," she said, genuinely confused.
"Look, you're not dirty. You're the first graduate student I've worked with because I see more talent in you than any other student that's come through here. I want to help you reach your potential." He smiled harder realizing that this practiced expression was the same one he used when he told an offender that he'd never betray their trust. Idiots.
"You don't mean that," she said quietly.
"I do," he said, giving her a pat on the shoulder. "So let's stop this foolishness and start talking about what mind-blowing research we're going to do together. You can just drop all the silly complaints."
"Okay," she said softly. She didn't want to give in, but it was so easy. She couldn't think clearly, and Wenton seemed reasonable now. He thought she was smart, and she wanted to believe him so badly.
THIRTY-TWO
"SO WHY'D YOU CALL ME HERE across from Mitchell Wa at the Fireside Room just off Spring Garden Road near the courthouse. The bar generally attracted a quieter, older crowd, which allowed the patrons more of a chance to talk. It was a comfortable, dark place full of leather booths and wooden bar stools. The narrow pub stretched back into a swirl of smoke where
Wa had selected a table as far away from the busy bar as possible.
"I wanted to ask you something," Wa began.
Wenton nodded, "About Brian Claric?"
"No. Why?"
"Never mind." Wenton dismissed the question with a wave of his hand.
A waitress appeared next to their booth, and they each ordered a Clancy's on tap.
"So what do you want?" Wenton asked.
Wa took a breath before he began. "When I saw you a few days ago you were asking some strange questions. You wanted to know if Edward Carter had changed me, if things were different now. You said you had a new theory on how Carter could get inside people, that there was still something going on even though Edward was dead. Why'd you say that? Did it have something to do with this Claric guy?"
Wenton shrugged. "I don't know. Forget about it."
"I can't do that."
"What's your problem? You told me you were suspended or something," said Wenton.
"Yeah, I beat up a suspect. A pedophile. I was checking him out for an offense against a young boy in Dartmouth."
"Who was the suspect? I've worked the sex offender programs. I know most of sex offenders in the area."
Wa knew it was a breach of police protocol to name a suspect in an investigation. "Terry Messier." It didn't seem to matter anymore, nothing did.
Wenton laughed, a little snort. "He's an asshole."
"Yeah."
"So what'd he do? Why'd you beat him up?"
Wa paused. He didn't know if he was ready to tell Wenton everything.
"I was interviewing Messier, trying to get some information on the recent offense. He wasn't being cooperative, which didn't surprise anyone. Well, part way through I look up and who do I see across the table? Edward Carter. I swear I looked up and suddenly Edward was sitting there, grinning at me. He started talking all sorts of shit about my family and I just lost it. When the other cops finally pulled me off the guy it wasn't Edward any- more. It was Messier."
Wenton threw his head back, "Oh man. Un-fucking-believable!"
This waitress arrived back at their booth holding their frosted mugs. As she set the mugs down, Wenton took a long look down her loose blouse.
"Wenton. This isn't a joke. I've felt different since all the Edward Carter shit happened. I went and talked to a pastor today and-"
"You went where? This is getting religious now?"
"The pastor told me about a friend he had at the seminary who believed that religious experiences could be enhanced with some kind of weapon. He was developing one of these weapons.
"Come on," Wenton interrupted. "This is getting ridiculous. You sound like Brian Claric."
"Why? What's he saying?"
"Brian's gone insane. He got caught up in the stories of the mental patients and now he believes ECOR Pharmaceutical is targeting him with electromagnetic weapons that make people insane. He thinks there's a whole conspiracy of illegal experimentation against the unsuspecting citizens of Halifax."
"Why is that any more crazy than Edward Carter creating insanity?" Wa asked, almost innocently. "You're the one who said that I was in too deep, that the evil was going to get me."
"I'm pretty sure I wouldn't say 'the evil is gonna get you.'"
"Whatever. You know something strange happened with the Carter case. Something happened in the house when you and Dallons found him. Edward was different-an anomaly or something. He nicked people up, per- manently. He did something to me and I think he did something to you. There was something about Edward Carter that had the power to change people-even change you.
Wenton knew Wa was right. He remembered sitting across the table from Carter in the MSPC and feeling the strange power at work. Wenton had watched Edward's features shift and change, as he tried the ugly look that would affect Wenton the most.
Wenton chose to ignore the argument. "What do you want from me?"
"I don't know. I figured you'd be the only one who'd understand what was going on. You're the only one who can really appreciate what I'm talk- ing about."
"What are you talking about?"
"I think Edward Carter was evil. I think that he was pure evil and that he somehow infected me. I don't know if I let him infect me, or if I didn't have a choice, but I know that I was changed by my involvement in that case. I think you probably were too. I know it killed Dallons."
Wenton snorted. "Dallons was on his way out anyway."
"Dallons," he snapped back, "was a good and decent man. He didn't deserve what happened to him."
"And you don't deserve this either, I suppose."
"As a matter of fact, I don't."
"What about me?"
"I don't know shit about you."
Wenton smiled. "Don't know? Or don't care?"
"I'm not here to play games with you. Carter left a mark on people that made them act differently, worse. I want that mark off me. I want to reverse the infection that Edward left in me."
"Left a mark?" Wenton said, smirking. He couldn't help himself.
"Fuck you," Wa shot back and stood. "I'm leaving."
"Hold on there," Wenton said quickly, raising both hands. "Have a seat."
Wa stopped, half-standing. "What?"
"You have to admit it sounds crazy."
Wa dropped back into his seat. "This whole thing has sounded crazy since it all began."
Wenton nodded. "So what's the experiment that your priest was talking about?"
"It was a pastor. Lutheran. Gary Wrightland."
Wenton shrugged.
Wa ignored the gesture and filled him in on some of what he and Pastor Wrightland had discussed earlier. He told Wenton about epileptic seizures and religious experience and about the research into extremely low frequency beams.
Wenton smiled. "So some pastor tells you this crap and suddenly you think you've been zapped? This is the stuff of delusions, a mental patient's fantasy. You and your priest ought to get together with Claric, you guys would love each other. You should all go down to ECOR Pharmaceuticals."
"Why does this Brian Claric guy think it's ECOR?" Wa asked.
"A couple of clients at the MSPC told stories about being zapped by electronic weapons and one of them said it was ECOR behind the conspiracy. Mind you, this information came from a disgruntled ex-employee of ECOR."
"And you think that's all bullshit?" Wa asked, more of a rhetorical question.
Wenton shrugged. "Claric said there were a lot of Web sites devoted to the topic. I checked it out. He's right. It seems like some of it is legit. There might be weapons around. Probably the military is playing with them. I guess I just found it hard to believe that a major company would run a secret experiment just to make a bunch of random people crazy. How much money can that make?"
"But it's plausible. Is that what you're saying?" Wa asked, the concern evide
nt on his face.
"Anything's possible," Wenton answered without conviction.
Wa looked away from him, deep in thought. "I'm going to ECOR Pharmaceuticals," he finally announced.
"Oh fuck," Wenton moaned. "Here we go again."
Wa's expression was steel. "And you're going with me. It's time for some fuckin' answers."
THIRTY-THREE
"Better keep an eye on that one," Eric said as he took a seat next to his fellow correctional worker, Bob.
"Who, the shrink?" Bob said, not looking away from his newspaper. The two men were inside an octagonal office in the correctional centre. From this control station they could see down four different corridors to the rows of cells. The border of the small room was littered with switches, monitors and intercoms.
"Yeah, he's pacing the cell back there, mumbling shit. He's not looking real good."
Bob laughed. "Gotta be some paradox here somewhere. A shrink going crazy."
"Irony," Eric corrected.
"What?"
"The shrink going crazy. That's irony. Not a paradox."
Bob frowned and waved Eric away with the back of his hand. "Fuck you."
***
No. No. No. No. I can't be here. I can't be here. This isn't real. This isn't me. I need to get out of here. I can't be here.
Claric stepped quickly to one side of his cell. He was tempted to scream out through the bars, get the attention of the guard who just walked past. He wanted to explain that he wasn't crazy, that there really was something going on, but he didn't know how he could explain that without looking crazy. He moved away from the bars and paced back to the small sink.
What do I do? What do I do? They must know I'm here now. I'm a sitting duck. I can't stay here. If they want to finish the job up, zap me again, I can't protect myself. I can't protect myself in here. There's nowhere to go.