Storming Heaven (18 page)

Beamon frowned deeply. He’d heard a saying once—that you could tell a bad man from a good one not by his actions but only his intent. He’d thought long and hard about it and wasn’t sure if he agreed. Religious persecution was just too easy to justify.

Volker stopped the car and set the brake. “The Kneissians are starting to use their great membership and wealth to indulge their organizational paranoia. To crush those they perceive to be their enemies and to spy on those who might exert some control over them. I suspect that they are very interested in you, Mark. They are quite concerned with America’s enforcement agencies—FBI, CIA, IRS, NSA—and you, as the head of the FBI’s Flagstaff office, probably top their list. I assure you that they are quite ruthless. But clever at keeping themselves from the media.”

Volker opened his door a few inches, letting in the buzz of the enormous crowd and the sound of intermittent feedback as a PA system was tested. “It might surprise you to know that we have to sweep the phones at the embassy and my home on a daily basis. On three separate occasions we have found listening devices. Once the police apprehended a man placing one of them. He was a member of Kneiss’s church.”

“Are we getting out?” Beamon said, as Volker pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped from the car. The German poked his head back in and pointed behind him at a large stage set up at the end of the Mall. “I thought it would be easier for you to hear the speaker. And that perhaps you would like to, uh, mingle a bit. I assure you there’s no danger.”

Somehow the assurance of one slightly effeminate European surrounded by half a million people who thought he was spirting in the face of their god didn’t make Beamon feel all that warm and fuzzy. But what the hell—he hadn’t incited a riot since college. “I guess whatever happens to me happens to you first,” he said, stepping from the car.

Volker smiled and began to talk loudly over the drone of the crowd, ignoring the hostile looks of the people within earshot. “I and my wife are routinely followed—the church makes no effort to hide it, hoping, I imagine, to intimidate me. Men I’ve worked with in Germany have suffered even more. One had a number of rather graphic photographs of him and his mistress sent to his wife, another was elaborately framed for a crime which he had nothing to do with.”

Beamon had heard quiet whisperings of the church wielding their power a bit unethically, but he’d never seen any proof. As much as he liked to believe the worst of organized religion, without corroboration, he’d always assumed that it was just mudslinging by rival faiths jealous of the Kneissians’ success.

Beamon let Volker hook an arm though his but didn’t move when the German tried to pull him away from the car and toward the stage. “I’d rather not have to shoot my way out of here, Hans. As much as I appreciate the effort, I’d be just as happy finishing this conversation over a cup of coffee at your office.”

Volker tugged insistently on his arm. “Please don’t worry, Mark. I personally guarantee your safety.”

Beamon stood his ground for a moment and then gave up and allowed himself to be led through the crush of people. “What can you tell me about Albert Kneiss?”

“A fascinating figure,” Volker shouted over a deafening round of applause. A man in a dark suit had just walked on the stage and everyone seemed happy to see him. “Born Christmas Day 1913 to a devout Christian preacher. You’re aware that it is believed that Kneiss will ascend to heaven—die—on Good Friday this year?”

“Yeah. Born on Christmas, dead on Good Friday. Just like Jesus.”

Volker nodded. “Interestingly, Kneiss did not immediately follow his father into the spiritual, but studied anthropology and later became a professor at the University of Chicago. He was quite brilliant, but his theories were extremely radical for the time. One—that a number of different species of humans inhabited the earth at the same time—has only recently been adopted. Unfortunately, his approach to anthropology was too much for the university, and he was eventually let go—a laughingstock in the world of science.”

Volker stopped next to a small knot of people in blue polo shirts identifying their home parish as Spokane, Washington. Between them, they held a large banner reading
FREEDOM TO WORSHIP.

“This should do, don’t you think?” Volker said, looking up at the man on the stage and gauging their distance. “You probably recognize Senator Tompkins from Massachusetts.”

Now that he looked more carefully, Beamon
did recognize him. Tompkins had taken a leadership role in criticizing Germany’s policies toward the church. It was impossible not to see him posturing in the media for the benefit of religious freedom at least once a week.

“Now what was it you were saying about Kneiss?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Soon after his removal from the university, his wife succumbed to cancer, leaving him with an infant daughter. He disappeared from the eyes of history for a number of years around this time. Eventually he reappeared in upstate New York with his Bible, transformed into God’s messenger on earth.”

“So he just combined his two areas of expertise—theology, which he learned from his father, and science, which was his chosen profession.”

“One would assume.”

“If he was born in 1913 he’s in his late eighties now. Is he still in control of the church?”

Volker shrugged. “I think it’s unlikely. There’s a group of seven Elders who operate the church. A woman named Sara Renslier controls the group.” He pointed toward the stage. “See the rather petite woman with short dark hair sitting at the back?”

Beamon nodded.

“That’s her. It was her appointment some twenty-five years ago that was the turning point for Kneiss and his followers. A formidable woman. She will certainly become the unequivocal head of the organization when Kneiss dies.”

Beamon pulled a pad from his pocket and struggled to overcome the jostling of the people around him and write the name down. “But if he
dies on Good Friday, shouldn’t he be resurrected on Easter like he was last time?”

Volker chuckled. “That would be quite a trick, wouldn’t it? But the answer, of course, is no. The Kneissians do not believe that the resurrection of Jesus had any real significance. Nothing more than the last in a long list of what they consider banal parlor tricks that Jesus—Kneiss—was forced to perform to gain credibility in a hopelessly superstitious time.”

“And he’s been doing this since the dawn of humanity—popping in every two thousand years to update the current thinking?”

Volker rose onto his toes to get a better view as two men shook hands on stage. “You really should make it a point to read their Bible, Mark. But the answer to your question is no. They believe that at some time in the distant past, the entity we now know as Kneiss was chosen by God to take the place of the prior messenger, who had gone on to his reward. And one day another messenger will be chosen to replace Kneiss.”

The booming voice of Senator Joseph Tompkins resonated over the PA system, and Volker had to raise his voice another notch to be heard. “This issue has become quite a boon for the senator, don’t you think? The church strongly encourages its members to contribute to his campaign fund every year, and what American doesn’t hold the issue of religious freedom close to his heart?”

B
EAMON PULLED THE NOTEPAD OUT OF ITS
paper sack and stuck it to the inside of his windshield with the suction cup on the back. Damn Volker was making him paranoid.

He groaned quietly as he forced his still-sore legs to jog through the snow toward the office of his condo complex. The light was still on, and Beamon could see that the property manager was stuffing papers into a large leather briefcase in preparation for calling it a day. He tossed a half-smoked cigarette—his first of the day—into a snowbank and slipped through the door.

“Tina! How goes it?”

She flashed him that broad smile full of straight white teeth that always seemed to take the chill off. She was such a cute little thing, just out of college and surrounded by the healthy glow that seemed specific to the inhabitants of America’s mountainous middle section.

“Mr. Beamon! What brings you out in this weather?”

“I was wondering if you could help me with a little information.”

“Have you been smoking?” she said, sniffing at the air.

“Just one,” Beamon said proudly, electing not to volunteer that he’d been in either Hans Volker’s car,
the J. Edgar Hoover Building, or an airplane since eight that morning. All locales under the ruthless control of the smoking Nazis.

She looked at him with mock severity. “I’ll let it go. But just this once. You absolutely must quit. Okay?”

He gave a noncommittal nod.

“Okay. Now, what can I do for you?”

“I need some information on a few of the renters here.”

“Which ones?”

Beamon ran his finger along the full-color map of the complex taped to the counter. “Anyone from buildings A, C, F, or H.”

“That’s a lot of people,” she said, obviously anxious to leave for the day.

“Let me narrow it down. I’m not interested in any leases signed before I got here, so just people who moved in January fifteenth or later. And I’m not interested in anything shorter-term than, say, a month.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” she said, turning and crouching down next to a cardboard box on the floor. “I hate filing and tend to put it off forever.” She pulled out a stack of folders and began sorting through them, tossing a few on the counter but dropping most back in the box. When she was finished, she neatened the stack of five folders lying on the counter and centered them in front of her. “These are all the ones signed in January and February for those buildings.” She flipped open each folder and threw three of them back in the box. “These two are the only ones that aren’t short-term.”

Beamon opened the first one. A family of four had signed a one-year lease. The second was a single male. Robert Andrews. Also a year. Beamon ran his finger down to the “employment” line. It simply read “self.”

“Could I get copies of these, Tina?”

“Sure.” She looked at him slyly. “Fugitives from the law?”

Beamon laughed. “Nah. Just haven’t hit them up for the FBI raffle yet.”

As usual, the phone was ringing when he stepped through the door, leaving him no time to take off his shoes. There was a visible trail of mud and water emerging on his carpet.

“Yeah. Hello,” he said, grabbing the phone “Mark! It’s Chet. Man, I’ve been trying to reach you all day! I thought you were supposed to be back at two.”

“It was a more elaborate trip than I bargained for. What’s up?”

“Hey, have I ever told you about that friend I have at the coroner’s office? Susan Moorland? You know, the girl I went to school with.”

Beamon thought for a moment, but his brain was already in shutdown mode. He just wanted to get into his beer rations and then into bed. “Sure,” he lied. “Seems like you’ve mentioned her.”

“Well, she called me this morning. Apparently she helped do the work on Jennifer Davis’s parents when they came in. She wants to talk to us about it.”

Beamon peeled off his parka and cradled the phone with his shoulder. “I’ve read the report, Chet—
and we both saw the bodies. If she wants to make an amendment, that’s what fax machines are for.”

“She didn’t ‘do the report, Mark. Her boss did. And she disagrees with his conclusions—strongly, judging from her phone call. I guess he’s normally pretty receptive to what she has to say, but this time he freaked out when she contradicted him. I can pretty much guarantee she isn’t going to put anything in writing.”

Beamon sighed. “Let me guess. She wants me to haul my ass out there in the middle of the night and stand around in a refrigerator with a bunch of corpses.”

“Uh, yeah. Tonight, actually. I know how you feel about morgues, but she’s got the bodies there still and she can’t keep losing their paperwork forever. Come on, Mark—meet you at the back door at nine? Please?”

Beamon rubbed at his eyes. He was dying to say no. Michaels and his little friend had undoubtedly tripped over a molehill and built it into a mountain while he was in D.C. But he knew that the kid would be devastated if he passed. “All right. You win. Nine o’clock. Anything else?”

“Uh, I don’t think so. No, wait. I got the stuff you wanted on Jennifer’s adoption. Nothing very interesting—quick and easy. She was only at the foster home for a couple of days when the Davises started paperwork.”

Beamon perked up a bit. “Really? Now, how does that work? Is it like buying a car? When the foster home gets in something they think you’d like they give you a call?”

Michaels laughed. “You make it sound so cheap. I don’t know if that’s how it usually works, but it’s not the way it went in this case. The Davises hadn’t ever tried to adopt before.”

Beamon nodded into the phone. “The ever- present impulse purchaser.”

“You’re a sick man, Mark. I don’t know why I hang out with you.”

“I sign your paychecks.”

B
EAMON STAMPED HIS FEET LOUDLY ON
the icy concrete and thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his parka. The mercury was down around zero, but on the bright side, the cold was keeping any strange smells from escaping the dumpster they were using as a windblock. No telling what those creepy coroners threw in there.

“Jesus Christ, Chet,” Beamon said, staring at the firmly locked side door to the newly constructed Flagstaff morgue. “If I knew we were going to spend a couple of hours out here I would have brought along a couple of Huskies and some firewood.”

Michaels put his finger to his lips, but Beamon refused to take the hint. He’d lost the feeling in his toes five minutes ago. “You know, Chet, they might let us in the front door, since I am, well,
the goddamn head of the FBI here.”

“I told you, Mark,” Michaels said in an exaggerated whisper. “Susan’s really going out on a limb here. She already wrote a contradictory report and her boss went nuts and threw it in the shredder. If he knew she’d called us she’d probably lose her job.”

“Uh-huh,” Beamon growled as he dug Robert Andrews’s lease agreement out of his pocket and handed it to Michaels. “Get me what you can on this guy, Chet. Nothing fancy, just a quickie.”