by Jude Hardin
The Potato Man would always tell me something, some bit of profound knowledge that I couldn’t remember when I woke up. That was the strangest part of it all. Here was this lightning-quick, devilish tuber with acid for saliva, and in the end he turned out to be some sort of ethereal soothsayer.
I woke up sweating in the motel bed, and just like when I was a kid, The Potato Man had told me something extremely important that I couldn’t remember.
I switched the television off and got up and took a shower and put my one fresh change of clothes on and stepped out into the misty dawn. I wanted to get my meeting with the police detective over with so I could start the nine-hour drive home. I only had two foil packets left, but I figured they would last me until evening when I could find a dealer in Jacksonville. In a pinch I could always prowl around Atlanta for a while, but I didn’t think I would need to.
The state police substation was just outside of town. I got there a few minutes before eight. The desk sergeant escorted me down a long hallway to a door that said HOMICIDE. Rex Atbury sat at an oak desk scarred with cigarette burns and coffee rings.
“Come on in,” Atbury said.
The sergeant left and closed the door. Atbury motioned for me to have a seat.
“Hope I’m not too early,” I said.
“Early is good. I like early. You want some coffee?”
“I had a cup on the way over. But thanks.”
He opened a notebook and took a pencil from a blue ceramic caddy on the desk. “This shouldn’t take long,” he said. “I just wanted to go over a few things with you.”
“OK.”
“How long have you known John Martin?”
“I first encountered him three years ago down in Florida. He was part of a neo-Nazi cult called the Chain of Light. Their militant branch was called the Harvest Angels, and he was part of that. I was instrumental in shutting the whole deal down. A bunch of people were arrested, but Brother John slipped through somehow.”
“So how did you manage to run into him again in Tennessee?”
“An old girlfriend in Florida met me for dinner one night and told me her brother had been missing for over a year. Her brother was Derek Wahl. She wanted me to come up here and take a look around, but I’d allowed my PI license to go inactive and I didn’t really have any interest in the case until she told me about the slanted crucifixes carved into the victims’ foreheads.”
“The murders at the Lambs’ place,” Atbury said.
“Right. A client of mine in Florida was killed and marked with the same kind of wound. The perpetrator turned out to be a member of the Harvest Angels, so I figured the tilted cross thing might be some kind of calling card. That’s why I came up here. I did some legwork and talked to some people and decided the murders were probably a copycat, but when I got home Derek Wahl was there about to kill my wife and daughter. He cut crosses in their foreheads, so that’s when I knew—”
“That Derek was part of the cult.”
“Yes. But now I think he was probably brainwashed, like I was.”
“What makes you think that?”
“He was a cop. He was called to the Lambs’ residence for a domestic disturbance. That’s when he went missing. Brother John kidnapped him and brainwashed him and sent him to Florida to kill my family.”
“How do you know Derek wasn’t in on the whole thing?”
“The nine-one-one call is on record. Somebody made the call, the dispatcher sent Derek to the house, and—”
“Derek was the only cop on duty in Black Creek that day,” Atbury said. “Think about it. He could have had someone make the nine-one-one call, or he could have made it himself from a prepaid cell phone.”
“I guess it could have happened like that.”
“And don’t you think it’s just an incredible coincidence that you were drawn into it the way you were? Your ex-girlfriend just happened to have a brother who just happened to belong to a new cell of the cult you shut down three years ago and the leader of that cell just happened to be the man you tortured and left for dead in the woods, the man who blames you for his face being devoured by fire ants?”
“Are you saying I was set up?”
“I don’t see any other way it could have gone down like it did. It had to have been planned from the get-go.”
I was about to ask him who could have played me like that when it hit me like a ton of crab nachos.
I drove back to the motel and loaded my things into the Ford Focus. I walked into the room for one last look around when my cell phone rang. I picked up.
“Hello.”
“Is this Mr. Lamb?”
I recognized the voice. It was Sharon, the ICU nurse. I’d told her that I was Virgil Lamb’s son.
“Yes,” I said. “This is Nicholas Lamb.”
“I’m breaking all kinds of rules here, and I’ll get fired if anyone finds out, but your dad regained consciousness a while ago and I thought you might like to talk to him. His heart rate is in the forties and he’s not breathing well, so this might be the last chance you’ll have.”
“Can you put him on now?”
“I will, but let me tell you, he’s a bit confused. He keeps saying crazy things about how the world’s going to end today. Sometimes it helps to talk to a family member.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“OK, here he is.”
The next voice I heard was a gravelly whisper. Even with the volume on the phone turned all the way up, I had to make a concerted effort to understand what he was saying.
“I know who you are,” he said. “And I’m not confused.”
“Who am I?”
“Nicholas Colt. You’re a private investigator.”
“That’s right. How do you know that?”
“I was a prisoner at Brother John’s complex, same as you. He forced me to tell him things.”
“What kind of things?” I said.
“Things about my past, things that will happen in the future.”
“You were a psychic in a traveling carnival. I know about that. But you don’t expect me to believe—”
“Believe whatever you want to believe. I predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I predicted the Martin Luther King assassination and both Kennedy assassinations. I predicted the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on nine-eleven. Just to name a few. None of those things had to happen. They could have been prevented if anyone had taken me seriously. The things I see are parts of one possible future, but the future can be changed. It happens every day.”
“So you’re saying that the world is going to end today?”
“The beginning of the end might happen today, but there’s still time to stop it. There’s still time if you’ll only listen to me.”
“How do you know all these things?” I said. “Is it like the voice of God speaks to you or something?”
“I just know. That’s all.”
I didn’t believe a word of it, but I decided to humor him.
“OK,” I said. “Let’s just say all that’s true. Why did Brother John come to your house and murder your wife and daughter-in-law? Why did he kidnap you and take you to his compound?”
I paused. I wondered why Virgil didn’t predict those things. I wondered why he didn’t predict them, and then try to prevent them. That’s where the whole “psychic” thing falls apart for me. They’re all full of shit. I let it go.
“And whatever happened to your grandson Joe?” I said.
“Brother John used my wife and daughter-in-law to lure you in. That’s what that was all about. It was a trick. He knew that Roy Massengill had cut a tilted cross into Leitha Ryan’s forehead, and he knew you were emotionally involved in that case. He knew duplicating that would draw you to Tennessee. He kidnapped me and Joe and brought us to his compound for one reason: he wanted me to tell him things to come. My grandson was only important in that he was important to me. Brother John made me watch Joe being tortured with electrical current.
That’s how he got me to tell him things. Joe was suffering so much, I begged Brother John to kill him. I promised to give him the ultimate prediction in return.”
“What do you consider the ultimate prediction?”
“The day Jesus Christ will return to Earth. That’s the one he wanted all along.”
I dredged up a faint memory from Sunday school when I was a kid, before my mother’s ’65 Falcon slammed into an oak tree and nobody took me to church anymore. “Doesn’t the Bible say that nobody knows when Christ will return?” I said.
“Yes. Matthew, chapter twenty-four, verse thirty-six: ‘But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of Heaven, but my Father only.’”
“Seems pretty cut and dried.”
“The angels of heaven don’t know,” he said. “But the angels of hell do.”
“I see. So you told him the date that Christ is coming?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, it’s a long way off and we’ll be dead and gone by the time it happens. But, I also gave him the date of an event that will set the wheels in motion. That’s the date we can do something about.”
“And what date is that?”
“Today.”
“And what’s the event?” I said.
“There’s going to be a nuclear explosion in Los Angeles.”
His voice had gotten even weaker, and I could barely understand him.
“Did you say a nuclear explosion?” I said. “In Los Angeles?”
“Yes. You know those Marshall speaker cabinets you took to LA?”
“Yeah. As far as I know, they’re still on the eighth floor of the Capitol tower. What about them?”
“In each of those speaker cabinets there’s a small nuclear device commonly referred to as a suitcase bomb. Each bomb has a digital timer set for noon today. Eastern standard time. At that time, several square blocks of downtown Los Angeles will be vaporized.”
“That’s insane,” I said. “Why would Brother John want to kill all those people?”
“Because I told him it was going to happen. In his mind, the prophesy must be fulfilled.”
I tried to wrap my head around the sheer absurdity of it all. “Why Los Angeles?” I said.
“It’s a densely populated area, for one. More bang for the buck. But it’s more than that. Brother John’s goal isn’t simply to kill a hundred thousand or so people. The prophesy calls for something much more catastrophic.”
I thought about it for a few seconds. The San Andreas Fault. That had to be it.
“He’s hoping to cause an earthquake?” I said.
“Not just any earthquake. The earthquake. This one is going to send half of California reeling into the Pacific. And he’s not just hoping to cause it. He showed me the graphs. By his calculations, the precise placement of the device combined with the strength of the blast will make a seismic event of epic proportions a mathematical certainty. There will be an earthquake, and it will kill millions of people.”
“So that was the deal with me going in to record with that band? To get the bombs in?”
“Yes. And that’s where the precise placement comes in. The Capitol Records building in downtown LA is in the optimal location to trigger the quake.”
I was still puzzled as to why Brother John had concocted such an elaborate scheme. “Why not just park the van by the building and leave it there?” I said. “I don’t see why he went through all that rigmarole.”
“He needed time to get far away from California before the blast. If he’d parked the van and abandoned it, all kinds of things could have gone wrong.”
“Like what?”
“People get nervous when they see an abandoned vehicle. They call the cops. The cops bring bomb-sniffing dogs, and then the bomb squad comes. On the other hand, nobody’s going to suspect a world-class guitarist to be carrying a nuclear explosive in his speaker cabinets.”
“So what’s the point in killing all those people?” I said. “I still don’t get it.”
“Brother John had an envelope he planned to send to the director of Homeland Security. The nuclear devices in the Marshall speaker cabinets were originally built by the Soviet Union during the cold war. More recently, they were acquired by a country in the Middle East that…how should I put it…has historically had a rather strained relationship with the United States. In the envelope is a metal plate with a serial number on it, along with a note spelling everything out. The metal plate can easily be traced. Once our government discovers who was responsible for blowing California off the map, they will naturally retaliate. Do you think they’re going to combat a nuclear strike with conventional weapons? Highly unlikely. It’s going to be no-holds-barred this time. Despite protests from the rest of the world, the United States will be forced to launch a full-scale nuclear attack against—”
“You’re talking about World War Three,” I said. “If the United States starts firing nukes, then a bunch of other countries are going to get involved.”
“Precisely,” he said. “Today’s mushroom cloud in LA is merely the catalyst, the first in a series of events that will lead to the end of the world as we know it.”
It all made perfect sense. Brother John was going to facilitate the return of Jesus Christ by starting World War Three. In his mind, he was going to be a hero.
“And you’re sure all this is going to happen?” I said.
“No. Like I said, it’s one possible future. It can be changed. The people here won’t listen to me. The guards, doctors, nurses, none of them. They think I’m a crazy old man, out of my mind. I’m a prisoner and they won’t let me make phone calls. Otherwise, I would call in a bomb threat so the right people could get out there and defuse those things. It’s up to you, Nicholas Colt. You need to make that call.”
I wondered why Virgil was a prisoner, and then I remembered that the police were still sorting through the people found at Brother John’s complex and determining which ones were there by choice and which ones had been abducted and brainwashed. Virgil obviously hadn’t been cleared yet.
And something else clicked. Now I knew why Brother John didn’t put up a fight when I punched him in the storage room at the Capitol Records building. He wanted to be taken into custody as quickly as possible, and extradited to Tennessee as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to stay in LA and be vaporized by his own bombs.
I looked at the time on my cell phone. It was 9:37.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll make the call. I’ve been dealing with an LAPD detective. I’ll call him directly and tell him everything you said. If you’re lying—”
I heard a loud clank followed by what sounded like rubber-soled shoes squeaking on a tile floor. Someone said, He’s not breathing, and then another voice shouted, Call the code. The phone went dead, and I had a strong feeling Virgil Lamb did, too.
I pulled Greg Sloan’s business card out of my pocket and started punching in the number. I was about to hit the last digit when a freight train named Earl plowed into me and knocked me on the floor.
Earl straddled me and pinned my wrists to the floor. He had hit me from behind and the impact had jarred the cell phone from my hand. It was only three feet away, but it might as well have been three miles.
Lester was walking around the room looking in drawers, but I’d already loaded everything into the car. All that was left was a Gideon’s Bible and a phone directory.
“I don’t care what you do to me,” I said. “But I need to make a phone call, and I need to make it now.”
“The only thing you need to do is shut the fuck up,” Lester said.
“You don’t understand. If I don’t make that call, it might literally be the end of the world.”
He laughed. “Yeah, right. It’s fixin’ to be the end of the world for you anyway, scout.”
When Virgil Lamb told me there was going to be a nuclear explosion at twelve noon eastern standard time in the city of Los Angeles, the first thing I thought about was my wife and daughter. Juliet
had told me their plane was landing at 11:00 a.m. (EST), and that they would be stuck at LAX for over an hour. If the bomb went off at twelve noon, Juliet and Brittney would be among those killed in the blast.
Lester sat at the desk and lit a joint. His lip was badly scarred from when I’d yanked the ring out of it. The upper lip and bottom lip didn’t make a tight seal anymore, and he occasionally had to wipe the slobber from his chin. I had a feeling he probably had trouble getting dates now.
“Gimme a hit on that,” Earl said.
Lester held the joint to Earl’s mouth and he sucked on it and inhaled deeply and held the smoke in his lungs until his face turned blue. He finally coughed it out, inadvertently spraying me in the face with his vile spittle.
“This is a nonsmoking room,” I said. “Didn’t you see the sign?”
“Oh fucking well,” Lester said, flicking ashes on the new carpet. “Rules were made to be broken. And so were fingers.”
He got up and stomped my left hand with the heel of his work boot. There was a sickening series of cracks, and the pain shot through me like a lightning bolt. My hand started throbbing immediately. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the heat and the swelling. I shouted and said, Motherfucker. Tears trickled from the corners of my eyes, and at that moment, I knew I would never be able to play the guitar again.
“You’re going to die, you son of a bitch,” I said.
He took a hit on the joint. “You know, I can’t drink from a straw anymore. My lips just don’t fit together right. You took that simple pleasure from me, and now I’m going to take some things from you. One by one, slowly but surely, I’m going to take them. What goes around comes around. Ever heard that?”
I didn’t say anything. I strained and bucked but Earl was too heavy to budge. The digital clock on the nightstand said 9:48. I was thinking there was still plenty of time if I could only make that call, and then I remembered that this part of Tennessee was on central time, so it was really an hour later. In my mind, I adjusted the clock to eastern standard time. It was really 10:48, which meant there was only a little over an hour until doomsday. Even if I had been able to call Detective Greg Sloan that second, I doubted the bomb squad would make it to the Capitol tower in time to defuse the explosives.