“As a young man I was recruited into a communal cult where we were brainwashed into following orders without thinking. They forced us to stay there and stripped us of our identities. This cult was heavily armed and very violent—the United States Army.”
LIEUTENANT GRADY TRAYNOR, AUSTIN POLICE DEPARTMENT
Seeing Grady’s ancient green Mazda parked in her driveway made her pulse quicken. Molly hadn’t seen him for five days, and she’d missed him—lots. Too much. She didn’t bother with the garage, just pulled her truck in next to his Mazda. As she got out, she heard whimpers coming from the fenced yard at the side of her town house. She walked around toward the gate. Grady’s low voice floated out to her. “That’s right, Copper. Good boy.”
“What’s he doing to be a good boy,” she called over the high wood fence, “peeing on my grass?”
The gate opened for her. Grady Traynor, dressed in a gray suit that looked as if it had been slept in for several lifetimes, stood there smiling at her. His white hair and mustache looked limp and slightly greasy. The circles under his eyes had darkened alarmingly and his tan was fading fast. After forty-seven days, the standoff at Jezreel was taking a toll on him that twenty-eight years of police work, eight of it in homicide, had somehow failed to do.
He opened his arms wide and Molly stepped toward him, her heart quickening.
Before they could embrace, however, a low growl made Molly step back hastily. An enormous black dog snarled up at her, his lips drawn back to show large yellowed fangs. The coarse hair on his neck bristled and his legs were spread aggressively. His amber eyes were slits of malice.
“Goddammit, Grady. That scares me.” The dog had repelled her from the start, when Grady had brought him by for the first time three months ago. He was a Belgian Malinois, Grady had informed her, though to Molly’s eye he looked exactly like a German shepherd. It was an ancient working breed, Grady explained like a proud parent, bred in Europe to herd sheep and kill predators, now used almost exclusively for police and guard work.
This specimen was mostly black, but with a dusting of reddish tan on his muzzle, neck, and front legs. His long narrow muzzle had a downward bend in it about midway between the eye and the nose, and the ear on his left side had a ragged notch torn out of it.
“Sorry, Molly. I keep forgetting that he sees close contact as something he’s supposed to do something about. He doesn’t mean anything personal by it.” He squatted down to pat the dog. “Okay, Copper. It’s all right, sweetie.” He rubbed his black head and chest vigorously. The dog quieted down. “See. He’s a real pussycat. If you’d get to know him, you’d—”
“Grady, don’t start that.”
“Okay. But if you’d just keep him here for a few days, you’d see that he’s—”
“No. Not for a few days. Not even a few minutes. I don’t want a dog. And if I did, this dog would definitely not be the one I wanted. I think he’s dangerous, a time bomb. He shows too much tooth for my taste.”
“This disappoints me, Molly. I would think you’d see the challenge here.”
“I’ve got plenty of challenges in my life. The answer was no two months ago, and it’s still no. This is your reclamation project, Grady. I predict you’ll regret it. When this animal bites someone and you get sued.”
“But look at him,” Grady said, still scratching the dog’s chest. The dog had his eyes closed in ecstasy and his left rear leg was thumping reflexively.
“Well, you certainly have the touch.” She laughed, thinking how much she’d like to get Grady upstairs in bed for a few hours. “That’s one thing Copper and I agree on. When do you have to be back at Jezreel?”
“Tomorrow, six A.M. We’re still doing twelve hours on and twelve off.”
She walked over to one of the rickety lawn chairs on the little brick terrace and sat down. “Killer schedule. After six weeks of it, it’s amazing you’re still standing. How’s it going?”
He sat down next to her. “It’s not. It’s not going anywhere. It’s a bust.”
“There’s nothing to tell. Forty-seven days, Molly—a month and a half—the best negotiators in the country working round the clock, and we have gotten fucking nowhere. Andrew Stein’s the guy who wrote the book on the subject. He’s got thirty years’ experience in talking perps out of doing insane things to hostages. He talked the Iraqi bombers out of the synagogue in Chicago; he negotiated fifty hostages out of that Colorado survivalist commune without a drop of blood getting shed. From Samuel Mordecai he can’t get one kid on the telephone for ten seconds. You know what we’ve accomplished in forty-seven days? We got one minute with the driver on the second day. And this morning—big breakthrough—we got him to agree to let us speak to the driver again. Tomorrow, he says. For that, we give him ten minutes on KLTX radio to play his sermon tape, plus we sent in some newspapers. We also stuck some inhalers in the bag with the papers in the hope that once they’re inside, he’ll give them to Josh Benderson.”
“Did you put listening devices in the inhalers?”
“Oh, God, Molly. We debated it all night, but if Mordecai found them, it would kill all chance of getting medication to the kid. So we didn’t.” He ran his hands through his hair. “That kid is seriously sick. Assuming he’s still alive. For all we know, they’ve all been dead from day one.” He said it fiercely.
“I don’t think they’re dead,” Molly said.
Grady sighed. “Me either. Not yet.”
“Have you figured out what he wants?”
“Sure. He wants an hour on network television. That’s what he’s really after, Molly—a worldwide satellite TV broadcast before Friday night. He wants to preach to the world.”
“So let him.”
“We will. Gladly. But he needs to give something in return.”
“All eleven kids and the bus driver?”
“That’s what we say. And they’d have to come out first.” He leaned over closer to her and whispered, “Just between us, we’d settle for six kids.”
“What does he say to it?”
“He doesn’t answer. He rants. He says we—the negotiators—are part of the military-industrial, computer-corrupted group of world leaders he’s marked to be made into blood statues. Didn’t he once threaten you with that?”
“Yes. When my cult piece came out.”
“So you may be wondering what blood statues are.” He raised his eyebrows at her, always a dramatic gesture since they were jet black and met in the middle.
“No. But I can see you’re going to tell me.”
“I think it’s important for you to know this. Because we—the negotiators—have not acted on his message, Mordecai has marked our souls with bar codes that emit a blue glow that can only be perceived by angels. We are not talking about just any angels here, but a team of military attack angels led by the Archangel Gabriel. When the trumpets blow on Friday, they will swoop to earth and cut our throats with heat-sealing laser knives. Then they will hang us upside down in such a way that with our arms and legs outstretched we will resemble pentagrams. And we will remain blood statues, rotting and stinking through all eternity.” Grady watched her for a reaction.
“Does he—” The words stuck in Molly’s throat. “Does he talk about the kids and the bus driver as being part of that corrupted group of world leaders?”
“No. He refers to them as Lambs. Damn, Molly, I’m so damned sick of his sermonizing. One of the things you count on in long hostage negotiations is the perps getting tired, but this madman shows no signs of it. We, on the other hand, are zombies. Listen to this: He says we’re the captives, not him. He says we’re caught between Gabriel’s attack angels and his legions of cult members on the outside, what Mordecai calls his Sword Hand of God.”
“Is there truth to that?” Molly asked. “Legions of cult members on the outside?”
“Not legions, but there are some and they are damned effective. It’s been hard to get much intelligence. The ones we can locate who have left are terrified of talking about it.”
“Are you thinking of letting some parents talk to him?”
“Mrs. Bassett. Actually, he’s requested her. Saw her on television, Channel 33 news. He says he’d like to talk to her. We’ll probably give it a try. She’s a real persuasive lady, and we don’t see how it could hurt. He also says he might let her come in and see the kids.”
“Would you allow that?”
“No. An ironclad FBI rule—no one enters a hostage situation, ever, for no reason, period. But we are out of ideas, Molly, running on empty. He’s just been stringing us along, buying time. I don’t think he ever had the slightest intention of letting any of those kids go. I think he’s got other plans for them.”
“Oh, Grady.”
“This leaves the door open for the HRT tactical nuts, the knuckle-walkers, to take over. They’re sitting in a warehouse three miles away in their Ninja suits cleaning their assault rifles. They’ve had an emergency assault plan ready from day two. They’re on fifteen-minute call-up and they are dieseling.”
Molly had been fearing it might come to that. She groaned.
“Yeah,” he continued, “giving up on negotiations probably condemns those kids to death. Eighty-six percent of the hostages who die get killed during an assault. If the bad guys don’t shoot them, we do. And Mordecai has convinced us—he will kill them all the second he thinks an attack is starting. Anyway, how can we attack when we still don’t know where in the compound they’re being held?” He closed his eyes. “But we have no choice anymore. And we’re going to lose them. Oh, Molly, it’s impossible.”
He let his head fall back on the chair. “I’m crisped.”
She’d never before heard Grady say anything was impossible. She reached out to take his hand, but the dog, lying at his feet now, looked up and growled low in his throat. Molly drew her hand back.
She was quiet for a minute. She had been trying to decide whether to tell him about Dorothy Huff and Samuel Mordecai’s adoption. It was a dilemma: Grady was a wonderful sounding board, the best person she knew to brainstorm with. And if there was a prayer of tracking down Mordecai’s birth mother, she needed his help. The problem was, Grady was a cop, first and foremost. If she told him, he’d feel he had to pass it on to his boss or to the FBI.
Grady said, “Well, are you going to tell me or aren’t you?”
Molly turned her head. He hadn’t opened his eyes. “What?”
“Whatever it is you’re agonizing over.”
“If I tell you, will you promise to let me decide how to use the information?”
His eyes were open now, studying her face. “Not if it’s something to do with this mess in Jezreel. Not if I think it’s police business.”
“Then I can’t tell you. I have a feeling about this.”
“Molly, don’t do this. You need to tell me.”
“I’m afraid the authorities will muck this up, that they won’t use it right.”
“Molly, my sweet, I am one of the authorities and you are the most overconfident human being I know. What makes you so sure you are better qualified to deal with whatever it is than, say, the FBI’s chief negotiator, or a thirty-year police veteran like myself?”
“You’re not in charge there.”
“True. But they’re not bad, these FBI agents. They want to negotiate the kids out and they have more experience doing that sort of thing than anyone else in the country. Some of them are assholes, but, hey, so’s Samuel Mordecai.”
She thought about it. “One thing I know, Grady: If I don’t tell anyone, there can’t be any leaks to the press.”
“You are the press,” he pointed out.
“No. Not in this case I’m not. This is nothing I want to write about. This information may have a much higher use.”
Grady was quiet, clearly weighing it. Then he put a hand over his heart and said, “Trust me.”
She leaned forward in her chair. “Did you know that Samuel Mordecai was adopted as a baby?”
The black eyebrows went up in surprise. “Evelyn Grimes was not his mother?”
“She adopted him when he was an infant.”
“Says who?”
“Says his grandmother, Dorothy Huff.”
He sat back in his chair. “Tell me everything.”
Molly knew that when he said everything, he meant absolutely everything, with no detail omitted. So, while the dog lay panting at their feet, she told him about Samuel Mordecai’s being found floating in a beer cooler in Waller Creek and about the adoption. Grady listened the way he always did, actively, and with total concentration, nodding and grunting and raising his eyebrows in astonishment.
“I have the robe and the adoption papers in my truck,” she finished. “Oh, here’s something else you may not know: Gramma Huff says that Annette Grimes, Mordecai’s wife, is not in the compound. She left months ago and is in hiding.”
“Really? She’s on our list of the hundred and twenty people we think are inside.” He stroked his long white mustache with his index finger. “That is mighty interesting. I would love to talk with Mrs. Grimes. Do you think Granny has any idea where she is?”
“No. I’m sure she doesn’t. Annette wrote Dorothy Huff to say goodbye and that she’d never be able to contact her again. Apparently she’s terrified for her life.”
“I bet. Molly, that’s important. I have to pass it on to Lattimore and Stein. We’ll find her.”
“Grady, here’s what I’ve been thinking about the adoption issue. Mordecai seems desperate to know who his birth mother is. He’s tried to find her and failed. It’s real important to him. What if we could find his mother for him?” She watched his face to see if he was responding the way she wanted him to. “If we could do it, it could be a major bargaining chip to use with him. We’d reveal her identity, maybe let him talk to her on the phone if he’d release some kids. I haven’t thought it through, but before you resort to force, this might work.”
“Maybe. If we can find her. Doesn’t sound like there’s much to go on.”
“I think I know how we could start, or how you could.” She waited to see how long it would take him to figure out what she had in mind.
It took two seconds. “Oh, Molly. Do you know how difficult that would be? We weren’t computerized in ’62. All those incident reports are boxed up in a warehouse in South Austin. And to find it with no one knowing what we’re looking for means I’d have to do the looking myself. Now, when I have no time as it is.”
She gave him a wide smile. “You could do it this afternoon. Or tonight.”
“Molly,” he wailed, “I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. And I haven’t spent any time with my dog.”
Molly glanced down at the dog. Copperfield’s eyes narrowed into demonic slits.
She looked back at Grady, who was grinning now. He said, “I suppose I could look for that report, if it weren’t for Copper. He’s going through a hard transition, Molly. He needs attention, and a stable home environment. The love of a good woman and a safe fenced yard.” He leaned back in his chair and waited.
With a sinking heart, Molly looked down at the drooling muzzle and the mean amber eyes. “Oh, Christ,” she said. “Not that. Anything but that.”
“Everything has its price, Molly.” Grady reached his arm around her shoulders, but when the dog began to growl he quickly withdrew it. “Take it or leave it.”
They had tried to leave the dog out in the yard, but he barked nonstop. Then they let him in the house but closed him out of the bedroom. That didn’t work because he howled and scratched on the door. So they let him in, which left them with the problem of how to touch one another without getting mauled. They solved it by pulling the covers up over their heads so he wouldn’t see them. It seemd to work.
“This is ridiculous,” Molly murmured, running her hands down Grady’s bare back. “Worse than worrying the kids will walk in on you.”
“He’ll get used to it, Molly. Give him a little time. Actually, it may be better like this, makes it feel more illicit. Reminds me of being a kid and reading under the covers with a flashlight. Best reading I ever did.”
Molly let her fingers wander all the way down the dip in his lower back and over his buttocks, still gloriously lean at fifty-two. “And just what were you reading under the covers, Lieutenant?”
“Detective magazines. Comic books. Innocent stuff.”
“Detective magazines aren’t so innocent. Ninety percent of all serial killers read them.”
“So I guess when you grow up on them, you become either a serial killer or a cop.”
“See, not innocent at all.” She moved her hips slowly against his until he moaned.
Later on, she was sitting on his back massaging his shoulders.
“Yes,” he said, “that knot right there. Molly, my lease is up at the end of the month.”
Her hands stopped kneading. “I thought you had another year to go.”
“Well, I did, but some of the residents have been complaining, so the landlord terminated it.”
“Because of the dog?”
“They’re so fussy. He growled once or twice in the elevator.”
“Objecting to being growled at in your own elevator doesn’t sound fussy to me, Grady.”
“Well, I never really liked it there. And it’s not a good place for a dog. No yard.”
She climbed off him and stretched out next to him.
“I’ll have to move,” he said.
She closed her eyes.
“Molly, are you there or have you gone to sleep on me?”
“I’m here, Grady.”
“If I moved in with you”—he rested the back of his hand on her stomach and slowly inched it downward—“we could read under the covers all the time.”
Molly was feeling her body temperature rise, but with anxiety, not passion. She leaned over and kissed him long and warm on the lips. When they both came up for breath, she said, “I love you desperately and forever. But, Grady, I’m not cut out for domestic life. I’m a slow learner, but I do learn eventually, after three failed attempts.”
He turned onto his side and pulled her tight against him. “This is domestic life. Right here, in bed, talking, making love. Molly, you know I don’t expect you to be a wife. I just want to be close to you, see you every day, sleep next to you. So we can do this in the middle of the day, like this. I don’t want you to change your life in any way.”
“What’s the matter with things as they are right now?” she demanded. “I love things this way. And we can do anything we want in the middle of the day now. Anyway, we tried it once and it didn’t work.”
“Molly, that was twenty-four years ago. We’re different people now.”
“I know, but—”
The phone rang.
Relieved, Molly threw off the blanket and reached for it. “Yes.”
“Molly Cates?”
“Yes.”
“Patrick Lattimore, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Yes, Mr. Lattimore. Grady is right here.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Under a blanket hiding from his dog.”
“No, it’s you I want to talk with,” said the voice on the phone. “Miss Cates, do you know a Gerald Asquith?”
Molly sat up. “No, not really. I haven’t met him. Just over the phone. We’ve talked.”
“You had an appointment with him tonight?”
Grady sat up and gestured to her to let him listen, too.
She tilted the phone and he put his cheek next to hers.
“Yes,” Molly said, “at seven.”
“Well, he’s not going to keep it. He’s dead.”
Molly’s breath caught in her throat. “How?”
“He was found by a dog-walker at Pease Park, tied upside down to a tree branch, naked. Throat cut.”
“A blood statue?” she whispered.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How did you know I had an appointment with him?”
“Asquith’s clothes were folded neatly nearby and in his pocket was his Day-Timer with your name and number. We had an appointment with him this afternoon. When did you talk to him?”
“Last night … around nine, I think. How would the Sword Hand of God have known about him?”
“I wondered about that, too, until I heard that Asquith did a radio show last night, one of the religious stations, and preached about the ungodly heresy of Donnie Ray Grimes.” Mordecai hated being called by his old name.
“So they heard it?”
“Yeah. And Mordecai might have, too, but we’re certain he can’t communicate with anyone but us. I am most distressed by this, Miss Cates. It means the Hearth Jezreelites are actively at work outside, looking for victims. How did you learn about Asquith?”
“A friend of mine, Adeline Dodgin in Waco, knew about his past disagreements with Samuel Mordecai. She told me about him. She’s the one who persuaded him to call you.”
“I see. Could you give me Mrs. Dodgin’s number, please?”
“Yes. I’ll have to find my book. I’ll give you to Grady while I look. Here.” She handed the phone to Grady.
She found her address book in the kitchen and got on the extension. She gave him the number. “I’m worried about her,” Molly said.
“We’ll check on her,” Lattimore promised.
When she got back to the bedroom, Grady was sitting up against the headboard looking worried.
Molly sat next to him and slid an arm around him. From the floor came a snarling. The dog was on his feet, poised for attack. Slowly Molly withdrew her arm. “God, I couldn’t live with that, Grady.”
Grady wasn’t paying any attention. He was staring into space. “Mordecai is lethal, he’s poison. This means anyone involved in giving information to the feds is in danger. Molly, you need to be careful.”
“I am always careful,” she said.
He turned a skeptical look on her.
“And now I’ve got a chaperone.” She looked down at the dog, who had settled himself next to the bed, but was watching with vigilant eyes. “So you can go out and find that police report from August 3, 1962.”
“We need to talk about my lease,” Grady said.
“Sure, we can talk. But let’s wait until this Jezreel thing is over.”
“Why?”
“Let’s say I can only consider one cataclysmic event at a time.”