Storming Heaven (32 page)

“How about Tuesday?” Beamon said, realizing
that the question didn’t make much sense after it had already escaped from his mouth.

“Tuesday, what?”

“Dinner. I thought we could go out.”

Beamon felt the knot in his stomach, started by his theory on Jennifer Davis’s impending doom, tighten at the thought of his dinner with Carrie. He had to distance himself from her until he got this church thing straightened out—there was just no other way. The tough part was doing it without: A) making it sound like a blowoff, B) making it sound like he was the kind of guy who couldn’t commit to a goldfish, or C) making it seem that FBI agents were just too much trouble to seriously consider having a relationship with.

“Sounds great. Pick me up at seven.” She leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the mouth, then disappeared back into her apartment.

Beamon stood there for a moment, stunned by the kiss. The clean, vaguely tropical scent of her hair still hung in the air, cinching down the knot a little tighter.

He cursed the church under his breath for their timing as he started back to his apartment. Couldn’t Kneiss have done his messiah act and died last year? Before he’d moved in above the most spectacular woman he’d ever met?

Spectacular or not, though, he had to figure out a way to get rid of her for a while and hope she’d come back to him when all this was over. That is, if Sara Renslier saw fit to leave anything for her to come back to.

M
AKING IT LOOK LIKE AN ACCIDENT
when he dropped the church’s tails was getting more and more complicated. The blue Taurus had been a little more tenacious today, forcing Beamon into a combination car wash/playacted road rage scenario that probably looked pretty thin.

He slowed a bit as he passed Ernestine Waverly’s house, noting the unfamiliar car parked in the driveway, and then eased to a stop against the curb about a block away.

The muffled shouting from inside her house was audible by the time Beamon made it halfway up the walk. He slid his hand around the handle of his revolver and put his ear against the door.

“Don’t do it, for Christ’s sake! Put that pizza down!”

“You have no right to judge me! That’s for God to do.”

“A few more slices and He’s going to be the only one that’s going to be able to haul your ass out of that chair!”

Beamon peeled his ear off the door and opened it. The car in the driveway and the voice inside belonged to Jack Goldman. He’d apparently arrived early—before Beamon had had a chance to prepare Ernie for his colorful disposition.

“Decided to sleep in? Whole morning’s gone,” Goldman said as Beamon walked into the cluttered room.

Ernie glared at Goldman as he struggled over to a small table and leaned against it, breathing sporadically. She looked like she was trying to stroke him out by sheer force of will as she tore into a piece of cold pizza with spiteful abandon.

“Morning, Ernie,” Beamon said. “Am I in time for breakfast?

“Don’t encourage her, Mark,” Goldman croaked.

“You be quiet,” Ernie shot back through a half- full mouth of pizza.

This was just perfect. He was up against an organization with millions of fanatical followers, nearly unlimited capital, and apparently unparalleled information-gathering capabilities. Even with the FBI behind him, he’d probably lose this one. But he didn’t have the FBI behind him. What he had was a man who had probably bought a Model ? new from the showroom and a morbidly obese shut-in who thought he was some kind of avenging angel.

Ernie shoved the rest of the pizza into her mouth with a final Herculean push and reached over to pull a piece of paper from under her keyboard. She wadded it up and threw it at Beamon. Hard. “That’s what you asked for. I ran the church’s old membership list against every database I could find.”

“Hmmff,” Goldman let out as Beamon unraveled the paper. He ignored the old man and ran a finger down the list of names. It was about what he’d expected. The presidents of two mortgage companies—one of which was probably getting ready to foreclose on his condo—the head of a medium-sized health/life insurance company, the heads of Vericomm
and its sister company, Verinet. On the political side, three senators—one of whom chaired Ways and Means—and eleven representatives, not to mention more than a handful of high-level bureaucrats. Interestingly, though, no credit card companies. Of course, any lowly clerk probably had the juice to completely unravel his credit for all time.

“You done screwing around yet?” Goldman said.

“Look, J
ack,
” Ernie said. “Mark is looking at the information I got for him. Maybe you should be quiet for once.”

Goldman glared back at her and pulled a stack of papers out of a briefcase that looked as old as he was. He caned his way across the room and spread them out on the table next to Beamon. They seemed to consist of wiring schematics and maps, though Beamon could only guess at their significance.

“The church’s compound, where that Kneiss guy lives, is here,” Goldman said, jabbing a gnarled finger at a colorful map. “They’ve got eight phone lines running out to an aboveground pedestal, here.” He flipped to a wiring schematic. “And then into a cross-connect box about a mile away. We can hit ‘em at the box. There are four lines coming into Ernie’s house, so we can terminate the taps here—use cell phone service. Then we can run a redundant site into the apartment I’m staying in. I’ve got three additional lines being installed this afternoon.”

“Where the hell do you get this stuff, Mr. Goldman?” Beamon said, shaking his head. “You just got here yesterday, for God’s sake.”

“You don’t think I have contacts?”

Beamon rolled up the maps and handed them back to Goldman. “Contacts or not. I may not have
the support of my organization, but I’m still an FBI agent. No illegal wiretaps. That’s the final word.”

“Jesus Christ, boy! You know what you’re up against here? They aren’t playing by your rules—”

Ernie cut off his tirade before it gained too much momentum. “As much as I hate to say it, Mark, he’s right. God doesn’t follow man’s law. We have to ask ourselves what He wants of us. The Lord gave us the ability to see beyond black and white.”

Beamon leaned his head forward and rubbed his temples. “Ernie, darlin’, you’ve got to give me a break on the religious stuff. I’m just an FBI agent, not Martin Luther.”

Goldman looked smug. “Well, for whatever the reason, I’d say it’s two against one.”

Beamon looked up at him. “Fortunately, my decision is the only one that counts.”

J
ENNIFER
D
AVIS LAY MOTIONLESS ON THE COLD
floor with her heels resting on the bed that had become the focus of her life over the past month. The burning in her stomach had just about subsided, so she lifted her back up off the floor and began a second set of situps.

After forty repetitions, her muscles felt like they’d caught fire, but she just pushed herself harder, trying to burn her anger, loneliness, and fear in the flame spreading across her abdomen. After fifty-five, the fuel for the fire was gone and she struggled to her feet and walked over to the remains of her breakfast lying on a plastic tray by the door.

She took the spoon off the plate and turned it over and over again in her fingers. Always a spoon now. The knife and fork had never reappeared since the day she had been taken to see her grandfather’s body. That pale bitch Sara must think she was going to kill herself and rob her of the pleasure.

Jennifer stuffed the spoon in the waistband of her underpants and lifted the heavy bed away from the wall. Using the end of the utensil, she scraped a small line in the plaster next to a group of similar lines. March 15. She moved the bed back, trying to force herself not to calculate how much time she had left. She was unsuccessful, though, just like she
was every morning. Twelve days, her mind told her as she dropped the spoon back onto the tray. The metallic clang seemed to echo through the room before being swallowed up by the silence that had swallowed her up. Two weeks.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said aloud.

She was going to get out of here. She’d done the hardest part, gotten control of her fear and managed to turn her loneliness and the memory of her parents’ death into a fierce sense of self-reliance. She’d figure out a way to get out of here. She had to.

And when she finally did escape, she
would
have a place to go. Sara wanted her to think she was alone, but she wasn’t. Jamie and his mother would take her in until it was time for her to go to college. With the money her parents must have left her, she could buy them a new house. Mrs. Rodrigues didn’t deserve to be stuck in that horrible trailer park.

The key hitting the lock startled her, as it always did, but she managed to fight the urge to back against the wall, instead standing in the middle of the room and facing the door defiantly.

Sara came in alone, but Jennifer could see the man who always accompanied her as he took a position outside the door. She’d never get past him. She had to think of another way.

“The elders would like to see you again, Jennifer,” Sara said, stopping a few feet away from where she stood. “You’re very important to them now.”

Jennifer struggled to control her rage. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the woman’s throat and couldn’t stop wondering if she could choke the life out of her before Mustache Man made it through the door and dragged her off.

“You tricked them. They don’t know what my grandfather really wanted,” Jennifer said.

Sara made a move toward her but then stopped when Jennifer didn’t shrink away. The woman glanced behind her at the open door, confirming her companion’s presence, and then turned back. “Think, Jennifer. If you do, I think you’ll remember things differently. You’ll understand what you are and what you’ll become.”

“You’re a liar,” Jennifer said. “He gave the church to me. He wanted
me
to have it.”

Sara smiled. “There’s nothing you can do to stop this, Jennifer, it’s God’s will. Deep down you know that’s true, don’t you? Your parents believed—enough to die for you.”

“It’s not true!” Jennifer said. Sara was just trying to confuse her.

An expression of anger crossed Sara’s face and then disappeared. “I thought you might like to leave this room one more time. But now I see that it’s impossible.” She walked out into the hallway and began pulling the door closed behind her. “Good-bye, Jennifer.”

“No! Wait!” Jennifer heard herself say. But Sara was gone.

She stood alone in the middle of the room for a long time, quivering with rage and frustration. She had to get out. In less than two weeks they were going to kill her. This wasn’t a game—it was real. She fell onto the bed and pulled her knees to her chest, feeling the tears well up in her eyes for the first time in a week.

She stared at the heavy wood door for a long time and thought back over the month she’d been there. There wasn’t any reason for them to let her
out again. And even if they did, what could she do? The strength and will she’d managed to piece together over the last few weeks wouldn’t do anything against the Mustache Man.

She was lying to herself. They would never let her escape. In twelve days Sara and the Mustache Man would come through the door for the last time. She’d struggle uselessly as they plunged the syringe into her. And that would be the end.

A
HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES BETWEEN THEIR
offices and he just couldn’t keep that man’s ass out of his chair.

Beamon looked through the window to his office at Jake Layman, who was, once again, flipping though the paperwork he’d found on Beamon’s desk. He didn’t look as angry as he had the last time Beamon had seen him, but he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“Morning, Jake,” Beamon said, opting to skip the trip to the coffee pot in an effort to get Layman back on the road ASAP. “To what do I owe this visit?”

Layman looked almost happy as he slid a two-page fax across the desk.

It was copied from a newspaper article, Beamon saw when he picked it up. The headline, in bold capital letters, read:
MARK BEAMON—FIT FOR DUTY?

“I have a friend at the
Chronicle,”
Layman explained. “He was courteous enough to send this to me before it hits the paper tomorrow.”

Beamon scanned the article, hoping that the headline was just a teaser and that the rest would get better.

It didn’t. The focus of the piece seemed to be his drinking habits and was heavily slanted toward the negative. It failed to mention his uncanny conviction
rate and what a fun guy he was at parties, instead using a collage of unrelated anecdotes spread out over many years to portray him as a pathetic, decaying drunk.

He had to give the author credit, though, the piece was beautifully written and exceptionally well researched. A chronology of undeniable facts taken completely out of context.

Following a brief introduction of the unfortunate theme, the article began with Beamon’s fraternity days at Yale, giving a detailed description of his invention of the Hop Hose.

Beamon almost managed a bitter smile as he remembered piecing the Hose together out of an old cooler and a bilge pump during exams his junior year. It had been a simple yet inspired device. You filled the cooler to the top with beer from a keg, stuck the hose emanating from the front into your mouth, and pushed the doorbell on the side. The bilge pump would fire up, a siren on top would start, and, well, you’d get filled full of beer in about a second and a half. As far as he knew, the original Hop Hose was still enshrined in a specially constructed glass case at his old fraternity house.

The article moved on to outline his inauspicious first meeting with the born-again director of the FBI, which, in hindsight, probably
had
involved about ten ounces too much bourbon and about a pound too much sarcasm.

The rest was more mundane, but equally damaging. Anonymous, but despicably accurate, stories of late-night party excesses and bloodshot mornings. It concluded with the same tired old crap about the vaunted FBI old-boy network protecting his “secret,” yada, yada, yada.