Under the Beetle's Cellar (26 page)

Molly said in disgust, “All this for a nutty eighth-grade dropout like Samuel Mordecai. Only in America. Let’s go.”

Officer Rhinebeck resumed speed. “Lieutenant Traynor said a mile and it’ll be on the right—a white house with lots of cars in front. There it is.”

It was a large, dilapidated frame farmhouse. The front lawn had become a parking lot. Cars and pickups, two Austin police cars, and several Ford Tempos that Molly recognized as unmarked units were parked at odd angles. When Molly opened the car door, Copper instantly leapt up and whined. Molly handed the leash to the policewoman. “Will you walk him, Julie?”

“You bet.”

A uniformed Austin cop slouched in a lawn chair on the front porch.
He stood as she approached. “Miz Cates? They’re waitin’ on you. Communications room—on the right.”

Inside, Molly was hit by a strange mixture of smells: the mustiness of an old uninhabited house combined with the slightly burned, acrid smell of electronics. The room on the right was a Victorian double parlor with elaborate wood moldings and a tiled fireplace. So much electronic equipment was crammed into the room that it looked like a Radio Shack at Christmas, with everything inside turned on: computer monitors glowing, radios, televisions, a bunch of phones, and a fax machine churning out a heap of curled paper. One television was tuned to CNN with the sound off. Two men with earphones sat in front of a switchboard and another stood drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. There was no air conditioning and they all wore dark suits in spite of the heat.

On one wall hung a huge diagram of the compound. On another wall were tacked photographs of the eleven children and Walter Demming. Around the fireplace were pictures of Samuel Mordecai, Annette Grimes, and about thirty of the other cult members.

Grady Traynor, his shirtsleeves pushed up, his collar button undone, his gray pants rumpled, was clearly not FBI. Sitting in a lopsided armchair that had tufts of yellowed stuffing hanging out of it, he was reading what looked like an endless scroll of paper.

“The seven seals?” Molly said, resting a hand on his shoulder.

He looked up. “No, a file the Cult Awareness League just faxed us. On the Hearth Jezreelites. Basically, it says they are secretive, dangerous, fanatical, and apocalyptic in orientation. Like we didn’t know that already. How’s my dog?”

“He’s outside. Taking a walk, sniffing trees.”

“So what do you think of him now?”

“Now I
know
he’s a maniac.”

Grady stood up, letting the papers drop to the floor. “In an eight-year career, he was injured thirteen times and made more than a thousand apprehensions.” He touched the bandage at her temple and ran his fingertips around the swelling. “How are you?”

“It’s just a flesh wound.”

“You know better than that, Molly. An encounter like that always hits deep below the surface. Let’s try again. How are you?”

“Shaky. And I can’t seem to stop talking.”

He kissed her gently on the lips. “Later I will listen endlessly. Let me have the tape. We’ll make a quick copy before we play it.”

Molly gave it to him and he handed it to a husky young man in a dark suit. “Copy it, Holihan. We’ll play it as soon as Lattimore gets back from his run.” He turned back to Molly. “We haven’t released this information
yet, but we talked to Walter Demming forty minutes ago. After we’ve played yours, I’d like you to listen to ours. It’s exactly seventy seconds long.”

A man wearing running shorts and a wet T-shirt entered the room. He was sweating profusely. He scooped up a towel from a chair, used it to dry his face and gray crew cut, then draped it around his neck. “Is this Molly Cates?” he said to Grady.

“Yes, sir. Molly, this is Patrick Lattimore, FBI assistant special agent in charge.”

Molly knew his face from the nightly televised press briefings. In person Lattimore looked even more like a Doonesbury character than he did on the tube. He had a big broken nose and heavy black circles under his eyes. His creased, jowly face looked thirty years older than his body, which was lean and fit.

He shook Molly’s hand. “When we finish with you here, Miss Cates, we’d appreciate your spending some time upstairs with our intelligence staff so they can show you some photos of suspected Sword Hand of God members. And we borrowed a composite artist from Dallas. Lieutenant Traynor says the Austin police will need you back at some point, but we’d like your help while you’re here.”

“One of them, the one who pulled Annette into the van—I never saw his face. The other two I can have a go at.”

“Good.” Lattimore glanced at her temple. “You’ve had that looked at?”

“The nurse at APD cleaned it.”

He waved a hand toward the other agents in the room. “Special Agent Andrew Stein, primary negotiator—you’ve probably seen him on TV—Bryan Holihan, George Curtis.”

Molly shook hands with them, paying particular attention to Andrew Stein, who was reputed to be the dean of hostage negotiators. He was a cherubic, unfocused-looking man with white hair that looked as wispy as a baby’s.

“We’re in a hurry here,” Lattimore said brusquely. “Let’s hear what you got. Holihan, is that tape ready?”

Holihan flipped some switches and Curtis closed the sliding door.

From speakers placed around the room came Annette Grimes’s voice, shaking and weeping.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’ve been with him since I was fourteen.”
Molly found herself cringing as the tape played. When Annette got to the part about the babies, Patrick Lattimore started to talk under his breath. “Holy Christ,” he muttered. “Holy Christ on the cross.”

Molly had never turned the recorder off, so it caught all the sounds
of the struggle: the van squealing to a stop. The screams, the snarling, the thumps, more screams and groans. Annette crying out, “No, no. Don’t! Help me.” Molly’s croaks of protest. A man’s voice yelling, “Shoot! Shoot the fucker!” The van roaring off.

When it was done, Lattimore turned to Molly. If he was shaken by what he’d heard, his face gave no sign of it. “If that dog wasn’t retired, I’d hire him. Christ, that’s the kind of agent we need. Now, first off, a few questions: Are you certain the woman speaking on that tape is Annette Grimes?”

“Yes.” Molly walked to the fireplace and pointed at the photo. “This woman. The same woman as the photograph I saw at Dorothy Huff’s house. She’s very distinctive. And she took her sunglasses off, so I got a good long look. There’s no question.”

“Okay. Second: What was she going to say when she stopped?”

“I think she was going to tell me that if Samuel Mordecai weren’t there to sacrifice the children, you might be able to rescue them. He’s the one who has to do it, according to this Rapture of Mordecai.”

“Yeah. We’ll get to that. Third: You’re a journalist. You have some sense of when people are telling the truth and when they’re bullshitting. Was Annette Grimes telling the truth?”

“Yes.”

A shadow crossed his eyes. He said, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear that. If Mordecai needs to murder those kids to fulfill his worldview, then we’ve spent forty-eight days negotiating for something he can’t give us. We’re going to have to fall back on force and I consider that a failure of major proportions.”

“Have you heard anything,” Molly asked, “about Annette or the van?”

“No. APD has put out a BOLO for it. They’ll let us know the second they get anything. And we’ll let you know. I have to tell you, though, Miss Cates, from what we’ve learned about Mordecai and the Jezreelites, you just don’t leave them and get away with it. The Sword Hand of God see to that. That’s why it’s almost impossible to get any insider intelligence. Mrs. Grimes flew the coop, and she told secrets. I don’t think we’ll see her alive again. She will probably suffer the same fate as Dr. Asquith. You were lucky to escape that garage.” He said it dispassionately.

“I know.”

Lattimore ran a hand over his still-wet crew cut. “Now I want you to listen to a conversation we had this morning with Walter Demming. This is not for public consumption yet, but Mordecai gave us a minute on the phone with Mr. Demming. In return, we are giving him fifteen minutes on religious radio for his sermonizing. As a bonus, we sent him some
newspapers he’d been wanting. We also stuck in the bag some inhalers for Josh Benderson. I hope to hell he lets the kid have them.” He nodded. “Our minute with Demming may have been a real bargain. We just wanted to find out if they’re all still alive, but I think we may have gotten a lot more. Maybe you can shed some light. Play it, Bryan.”

Again Holihan flipped switches.

Andrew Stein’s rich voice emerged from the speakers. “Mr. Demming, this is Special Agent Andrew Stein of the FBI. How are you?”

Walter Demming’s voice was low and controlled. “I’m alive and so are the children. They said I could tell you that. We are fed, and every day Mr. Mordecai instructs us. He said I could send some messages from the children. Here they are: Kimberly wishes her mother a happy birthday. She loves her and her grandma lots. Bucky wonders if his little brother Danny is sleeping in his room since he’s been gone. Lucy says her mom should give Winky a hug and she wants to come home and never leave. Josh says his mom shouldn’t worry and he can’t wait to get back to his dad’s mashed potatoes and sugar bread. Hector says to tell his Aunt Emily and Uncle Theo that he can’t wait to ride old Riddle further than the guests can gallop. Brandon sends his dad the peace of God which passeth all understanding and wishes he had a prayer book. Sandra says to tell Mrs. LaPonte, the school librarian, she’s read
Stuart Little
every day and it’s her favorite book now. Conrad asks the Second Baptist Church to pray for him. Sue Ellen says she loves her family a bunch. Philip says he wants to come home. Heather says hi, Mom, be good, and sends kisses.

“And here’s my message. Tell my good friend Jake Alesky to send love to Granny Duck. Tell her I keep in mind what she taught me about survival, and I will live up to her example.”

When he fell silent, Stein’s voice took over. “Mr. Demming, we are working around the clock to get you all out safe. We haven’t forgotten you. We are worried about Josh Benderson. How is he?”

“Okay. They said I could—”

A new voice sliced in. “You’ve exceeded your minute. We just threw our videotape out the front door. Send one of them reporters to pick it up. He should keep his hands on his head.” The connection was broken.

Holihan hit the rewind.

Lattimore looked at his watch. “We’ve sent a car for Jake Alesky. They should be here in a few minutes. We want to hear about Granny Duck.”

“Me, too,” Molly said.

“Did anything strike you about the kids’ messages?”

“The one from Hector was strange.”

Lattimore grimaced. “You don’t know the half of it. We’ve got all the parents corralled with some counselors at the Lutheran church over in Round Rock. We played the tape for them. Hector’s mom and dad say Hector has no Aunt Emily or Uncle Theo, and no horse named Riddle or anything else, and they have no idea what that message means. None of the other parents do either, so it isn’t a question of Demming’s having gotten it garbled or mixed up with some other kid’s message.”

“What did he say again?”

“Bryan, give Miss Cates a copy of the transcript.”

Holihan handed her a sheet. Molly read it through, lingering on the message from Hector.

“Mean anything to you, Miss Cates?”

“ ‘Tell Aunt Emily and Uncle Theo that he can’t wait to ride old Riddle further than the guests can gallop’—No. Strange.”

“We thought so, too,” Lattimore said.

“Wait!” It came to her the way most good ideas did, like a silver fish slithering through a crevasse in her brain, exciting some neurons and dendrites as it rubbed past them. “Oh, my God. Walter Demming is in a poetry group with his neighbor Theodora Shea. Theo. It’s for Theo. And they’ve been reading Emily Dickinson—Aunt Emily.”

Lattimore slapped both palms against the wall. “Shit. The neighbor lady. We talked to her a few weeks ago. Poetry group, huh?” He turned to the man standing by the door. “Curtis, get me Theodora Shea on the phone. Do not tell me she isn’t home. I want her, and I want her right now. Put her on the speaker.” His voice was harsh with excitement.

Curtis sat at the computer and with a few keystrokes got a phone ringing.

A firm female voice answered.

Lattimore spoke into the speaker next to the computer. “Miss Shea, this is Agent Patrick Lattimore of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We talked a few weeks ago. I’ve got you on the speakerphone here at our command post near Jezreel. There are three other FBI agents present. Lieutenant Traynor from the Austin PD is here, too, and Miss Molly Cates, whom I believe you have met.”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was crisp and businesslike.

“Miss Shea, we talked briefly on the phone with Walter this morning.”

“Oh, my.”

“He said they were all alive and he relayed some messages from the children to their parents. One of the messages had no meaning for the parents involved. Miss Cates thinks you might know something about it.”

“Try me.”

He picked up the transcript. “Here it is, ‘Hector says tell his Aunt Emily and Uncle Theo he can’t wait to ride old Riddle further than the guests can gallop.’ ”

Without a second’s hesitation Theo said, “Not guests, Mr. Lattimore—
guess
, with two
s
’s, no
t.
Further than guess can gallop, further than Riddle ride. It’s Emily Dickinson. From the poem that begins:
‘Under the light, yet under, under the grass and the dirt, under the beetle’s cellar, under the clover’s root.’
 ”

“Holy Christ,” Lattimore muttered. “Under the grass and the dirt.”

“I don’t know the rest of it by memory, but it ends with that wonderful line:
‘Oh for a disc to the distance between ourselves and the dead.’
”

“I’m going to need a copy of that poem, and right quick,” Lattimore snapped. “Curtis, see if you can locate it on-line. Miss Shea, what’s the title?”

“Dickinson’s poems are numbered, not titled. You said Molly Cates is there?”