Southern Cross (19 page)

The
cross continued to burn, the flames deep orange against the night sky.

The
front door of the house stood open. We followed Diggs inside, and were greeted
with chaos: furniture thrown, spray-painted epithets on the walls, more
inverted crosses as far as the eye could see.

“She
left,” Diggs said. He sounded relieved.

“How
can you be sure?” I asked.

“Sally
has dogs—she rescues pit bulls. Has at least half a dozen of them. If they’re
not here, it’s because she took them and ran before anyone got here.”

He
shook his head, running his hand through his hair. I tried to think of
something comforting to say, but came up with nothing. It was five a.m.
According to Barnel’s timetable, we had nineteen hours left until “judgment.” I
wasn’t sure any of us were prepared to deal with whatever his followers had in
store for those nineteen hours.

18:46:02

We
stopped at the Durhams’ after Sally Woodruff’s place. Morning was just
breaking, gray and drizzling. It felt like the night had gone on for years. I
lowered my visor and looked in the vanity mirror, watching as Diggs stared out
the window, his forehead tipped against the glass. I tried to imagine the kind
of sanctuary the Durhams must have represented for him—a teenage boy whose
parents had both as much as told him he’d ruined their lives with one stupid,
disastrous mistake.

Given
his background, I could understand why it might be appealing for him to
disappear here for those five years when he’d married Ashley. Try to start a
new life as an official member of the Durham clan.

Juarez
stopped the car and cleared his throat. Diggs looked up. I
snapped my vanity mirror closed again.

“We’ll
just run in and check on them, and get our stuff,” Diggs said.

“Go
ahead,” Juarez said, with a nod that included both of us. “I’ll wait.”

Einstein
greeted me at the door with a kind of subdued, anxious enthusiasm—like he was
well aware the world was falling apart around our ears, and he didn’t
appreciate being sidelined during all the action.

Mae
was on the couch in the sitting room, surrounded by candles. Ida slept with her
head in her mother’s lap, her pale blonde hair hiding her face, while Mae
thumbed through old photo albums. She put her finger to her lips when we came
in.

“We
just wanted to check on you,” Diggs whispered. He looked so guilty you would
have thought he’d personally engineered this whole plot himself. Mae nodded to
the photos in her lap.

“I’ve
been looking over some things,” she whispered. “We had a lot of good times over
the years, didn’t we?”

Diggs
nodded, mute. Mae put her hand over his and squeezed. “This wasn’t your fault,
darlin’,” she said softly. At the words, Diggs swallowed convulsively. A good
stiff breeze and I expected the whole room to dissolve into tears. “You don’t
listen to anything I said—you were lookin’ out for my boy, the way you’ve
always done. That’s it.”

He
kissed the top of her head gently. “We’ll get him back, Mae.”

“I
know,” she said. Something about the hollow way she said it, though, made me
think she didn’t believe him. “I’m gonna pack up the kids and move on over to
Ashley’s as soon as everybody’s up, at least ‘til this is over. It’s not good
for them, me rattling around the house like this.”

“What
about Rick?” Diggs asked.

“Sleepin’,”
Mae said. “That boy can sleep through anything. Always could. Danny was always
restless, colicky, always after somethin’. Rick never seemed to need anything.
Danny needed the world.”

It
felt like she wasn’t even talking to us anymore, gazing at the photos of a life
she’d lost in the blink of an eye. Diggs and I stood there awkwardly for a
minute more before we said our goodbyes, and went upstairs together to pack the
rest of our things.

18:00:02

The
war room looked much more warrish when we got there at six o’clock that
morning. For one thing, Blaze had moved from the tiny room in the back of the
police station to a classroom at the local elementary school, now being powered
by generators. The kids’ desks had been moved out to make way for actual, grown
up replacements. New computers and a dozen agents filled the space. In front of
the chalkboard and a map of the U.S. was Blaze’s nifty super-computer.

“Wait
in the hall, please,” she said to Diggs and me as soon as we crossed the
threshold. She looked tired. And very pissed off.

We
did as she ordered, seated in two of those god awful student desk/chair combo
torture deals, beside a trophy case and a mural of dancing tigers. I had no
idea why the tigers were dancing. Maybe they were excited about the end of the
world.

Einstein
took all of it in stride, seemingly just happy to be back under my feet again.
A minute or two into our wait, however, he was up again, whining anxiously.
Buddy Holloway came around the corner and Stein dashed after him like they were
old friends, whimpering ecstatically. Another two seconds and it became clear
that Buddy’s appearance had nothing to do with my pup’s warm reception.

Grace,
the Burketts’ golden retriever, appeared a few steps behind Buddy. Her tail was
down and her head was bandaged. She looked miserable. Buddy waved to us; he
didn’t look all that happy himself. Einstein trotted over and gave Grace a
perfunctory butt sniff before he very gently bumped against her side and licked
her muzzle.

“Looks
like you found a friend,” Diggs said to Buddy.

The
deputy scowled. “I didn’t mean to, believe me. The dang vet closed his office, and
nobody was around to take her. Otherwise they would’a taken her to the pound,
and like as not she would’a been put down before the end of the day. My wife’ll
kill me, though. We’ve got a little one on the way and two dogs in the house
already—I’ll be sleepin’ with ‘em if I bring Gracie here home.” 

“I
can watch her, if you want,” I said, long before I really had a chance to think
it over. Buddy looked like he’d kiss me.

“You
sure? That’d sure be a load off my mind.”

“What’s
one more? Though just for a few days,” I qualified. “Assuming the world doesn’t
end at midnight, we’ll need to find her a permanent home. One that’s not
mine.” 

“Sure
thing,” Buddy agreed. He eyed the war room. “How’s everything goin’ in there?”

“Not
sure,” Diggs said. “We haven’t made it in there yet. What’s the status on the
DQ bombing? Any news?”

“Two
dead. About twenty-plus injured. No damage beyond the Dairy Queen and… well,
the sheriff’s van, of course. Looks like he used a few homemade Malatov
cocktails; had some explosives inside his car, too.” He shook his head. He
looked as tired as I felt. “I still can’t believe he’s gone. And I sure can’t
believe the way he went.”

Blaze
opened the door then and greeted Buddy with a perfunctory nod. “You mind giving
me a few minutes, Deputy? Go on in and find a seat—I’ll be in shortly to brief
everyone.”

“Yes,
ma’am,” he said quickly and stepped past her. I had a feeling Diggs wasn’t
getting off so easily.

Blaze
nodded to our torture chairs. “Have a seat.”

We
sat. The dogs settled in at our feet and Blaze walked down the hallway until
she found a normal chair and carried it over. She set it facing Diggs.

“Are
you all right?” she asked him.

“Yeah,”
he said. “Few stitches. Nothing major.”

“That’s
good,” she said. She looked at me.

“I’m
fine,” I said before she could ask.

“Excellent.
I heard what you two did after the explosion—how you helped getting people to
safety. Well done.”

“Thanks,”
Diggs said. “It was mostly Solomon, though—”

“I’m
not finished,” Blaze said. Her eyes never left Diggs’. It was getting damned
uncomfortable in that hallway.

“This
worked out, in the sense that you’re both alive, and you apparently were not
the motive behind Jennings’ attack. But, if you ever ditch me again, I will put
that cute little ass of yours in jail faster than you can say ‘prison bitch.’”

“I
didn’t—” Diggs began.

“Still
not done,” she said shortly. “Make no mistake, Mr. Diggins: I believe these
people will come after you. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.
But I’m not just here to protect you; I’m here to stop a plot that as far as we
know could kill dozens, if not hundreds.

“I
know exactly what you and your little girlfriend here pulled on Agent Juarez in
Canada over the summer. That will not happen here. When I tell you to do
something, I want it done. And you two can roll your eyes and make snide
comments all you want—I’m here to do a job. I’ll do everything in my power to
see that you and everyone here makes it through this. But if that doesn’t
happen, it sure as hell is not gonna be because you refused to follow basic
instructions from me regarding this investigation.”

And
then, she took out a pair of handcuffs and slapped one around Diggs’ wrist and
one around his desk.

“This
isn’t baseball—there’s no three strikes rule. Ditch me once, shame on me. Ditch
me twice, your balls are in a vice. You’re in protective custody from here on
out.”

She
looked at me. I swallowed hard and tried not to look even remotely obstinate.
“Agent Juarez assures me you’ll do whatever he says regarding this
investigation. So far, you’ve proven that to be true. See that it stays that
way.”

She
got up, patted Diggs on the head like he was one of the pups at our feet, and
walked away. I stared after her.

“Wow,”
I finally managed. I looked at Diggs. “Honestly? I think I’m a little turned
on.”

“I
wish you two well,” he said. He glared at his cuffs. “This really isn’t gonna
work for me, though.”

<><><> 

One
of the new agents from Blaze’s team—Agent Keith, an overly muscled little guy
with an obvious Napoleon complex—came out a few minutes later, uncuffed Diggs,
and led us back into the war room. Blaze’s point had clearly been made.

Inside,
Diggs and I took our seats in the back, the dogs once more at my feet. In
addition to a dozen FBI agents, there were now half a dozen National Guardsmen
and women lined up at attention in the back of the classroom. It made for a
disconcerting meeting, to say the least.

“So,
what do we know?” Blaze asked Agent Keith. He stood.

“Jesup
Barnel was a preacher who began holding services at sixteen, back in 1962. He
started the casting out of demons for which he was known, officially in 1967.
However, there are indications that he may have begun as early as ’63.”

A
video came up on the screen at the head of the class: A much younger Barnel,
standing over a teenage boy strapped to a table. The boy was stripped to his
tighty whities, surrounded by about twenty men, women, and children exhorting
the Lord to rid him of his demons. Barnel’s son—Brother Jimmy, the same guy
who’d clocked Diggs after Wyatt’s funeral—handed him a branding iron. The end
was blazing orange. The kid screamed.

Blaze
turned the video off.

“Barnel
apparently fancied himself a filmmaker: his activities were well documented
over the years. This is footage from one of Barnel’s standard exorcisms,
performed in 1986. Of more than two thousand such rituals, we’ve found video
footage of more than half.” I felt Diggs tense beside me. Blaze caught his eye,
then looked away. I caught the significance of the look, though: they’d seen
footage of Diggs. Or, if they hadn’t watched, they at least had it there. Blaze
continued, her focus back on the rest of the group.

“To
date, four of Barnel’s victims have now been executed and defaced by the
removal of the preacher’s ritual cross, and the subsequent reattachment of the
skin upside down, resulting in an inverted cross. There are two possible
meanings for this.”

She
shifted, bringing something up on the Smart Board. “An inverted cross is used
widely in satanic ritual, and may be the killer’s way of taking credit for the
crime. The victim, in this case, would be viewed as a sacrifice.”

“But
you don’t think this is Satanists,” Diggs said.

“No,”
she agreed. “I’ve consulted with my colleagues, and we agree this is more
likely rooted in Christian symbolism. For those unfamiliar with Biblical
scripture, there is a story in early Apocryphal works relating how Christ’s
apostle—Peter—requested that he be crucified upside down, as he didn’t feel he
was worthy to die in the same manner Christ had. From that point on, an
inverted cross became known as the Cross of St. Peter, or the Latin Cross. In
Catholicism and other Christian religions, it’s become associated with humility
and deference to Christ.”

“So,
these Latin crosses are to show the world that the victim isn’t worthy of an
actual, right-side-up cross,” I said.

“That’s
our thought,” Juarez agreed.