Storming Heaven (34 page)

“W
E’RE GOING TO GET THOSE SONSOFBITCHES
for you, boy,” Jack Goldman shouted, swinging his cane wildly to punctuate his point and inadvertently knocking over a stack of books next to him.

“Would you be careful with that thing! I’ve got expensive equipment here!” Ernie hollered back at him.

“Come on, guys. Calm down,” Beamon said, trying to bring the noise in the room to a level that wouldn’t split his head open. He adjusted his sunglasses on his nose and began restacking the books at Goldman’s feet, trying to ignore the nausea gripping him and the fact that he was the only member of his “team” who was capable of completing this simple task.

“If this is your new FBI,” Goldman continued in a quieter voice, “you can have it. When Hoover was alive, they wouldn’t begrudge a man a drink! Now all they want to do is hire a bunch of pansies who aren’t afraid to cry and then send ‘em to sensitivity training. No one would’ve dared—”

“Where’s your bathroom?” Beamon asked, cutting Goldman off before he got too warmed up to his subject.

Ernie pointed behind him. “Down there, your first right.”

She looked a bit confused as he sat down and dug a handful of Advils from his pocket. His stomach rolled over at the prospect of sending anything down to it, but he forced a couple of tablets anyway. “Don’t need it now,” Beamon explained to her. “Just wanted to get a fix on it.”

“Drinking never solved anything, Mark.”

Beamon let out a short, painful laugh. “I said the same thing to Mr. Goldman here nearly twenty years ago.” He looked up at the old man. “You remember what you told me?”

“I told you that sobriety never solved anything, either.”

“That’s right.”

Goldman waved his cane around again, but this time in a more controlled pattern. “It’s time to get off our asses, Mark. We’re letting ourselves get screwed here.”

“The suspension’s done,” Beamon said. “It is what it is. They’re trying to get me to take my eye off the ball.”

“Jennifer,” Ernie said.

Beamon nodded. “The FBI won’t be pursuing the church angle, so they have no chance of getting her back before her time’s up. We’ve got to do it. I’m open to suggestions as to how.”

Ernie leaned forward in her wheelchair as far as her bulk and the straining banana-print fabric containing it would allow. “The church doesn’t have that many places where they could be holding someone against their will, Mark. Maybe you could search them.”

Beamon shook his head. “I can pretty much guarantee you that Jennifer’s being held at Kneiss’s
ompound, Ernie. I don’t think we need to look any further than that.”

“Then why don’t we—”

“How?” Goldman cut in. “I looked at that place. It’d take an army to get in there with all that security.”

“Mr. Goldman’s right, Ernie. There’s no way in there. Do you think they might move her? If we’re right, don’t you think Sara would have to invent some kind of ceremony for her death? Where would they do something like that?”

Ernie shook her head. “There’s no one place, Mark. The chapel in the compound would be as good a place as any.”

“I doubt they’d dispose of the body on Kneiss’s property,” Goldman said. “Ground’s frozen anyway. Maybe we could get them red-handed when they bring her body out Easter weekend?”

Beamon stood and began pacing back and forth across the room, the motion settling his stomach a bit. “No. No way. I refuse to be responsible for this girl’s death. We’re going to get her before anything happens to her.”

“Then we’re back to Jack’s wiretap,” Ernie said.

That was exactly where they were, Beamon knew. He’d spent most of his career at the FBI being a pain in the ass, completely unconventional, and occasionally even sneaky. But he’d never done anything illegal. “How long, Mr. Goldman?”

“Now you’re talkin’, son. You and me, tomorrow night. It’ll be fun.”

Beamon unbuckled his seatbelt and leaned out the car window to get a better look at the screen of the cash machine. It was heavily overcast, but he was still unwilling to take off his sunglasses and that was making it even more difficult to read the small letters.

He tried again, with the same result.

Beamon pulled his car into a space close to the door of the bank and went inside. He walked down the long line of teller windows and slid his ATM card to a young girl with bright pink barrettes in her hair. “I seem to be having some trouble making a withdrawal from your machine. Could you check my account for me?”

“Of course.” She held the card up and examined it carefully. “Sometimes the magnetic strip on the back of these things gets messed up. Do you keep it in the little sleeve?”

He shook his head as she punched his account number into her terminal. An expression of mild confusion spread across her face as she looked at the screen, giving Beamon a not-so-unexpected sinking feeling.

“This is kind of weird,” she explained. “You’re showing a zero balance. Could you hold on a second?”

She hopped off her stool and hurried to an older woman standing at the end of the counter. The woman returned with her and, with a brief smile acknowledging Beamon’s presence, began punching buttons on the keyboard.

“Could I speak to you over here, please, sir?” she said after less than a minute. Beamon followed her to a deserted area at the edge of counter.

“Mr. Beamon, your accounts have been liened by the IRS. They’ve ordered us not to accept any further transactions on any of your accounts.”

Beamon felt his jaw tighten and he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the woman had stepped back a couple of feet.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do,” she said nervously. “Except give you the number of the local IRS office so you can get this straightened out.”

Beamon walked out of the building to his car, looking carefully around him at the people in the parking lot. He was sure he hadn’t been followed to Ernie’s house, but now, in this busy part of town, it was possible that they could have reacquired him.

Satisfied that he wasn’t the subject of any undue attention, he reached under the seat and ran his fingers along the envelope containing the five thousand dollars he’d withdrawn last week. All the money he had in the world now.

He wondered if he’d get a chance to spend it.

B
EAMON STRAIGHTENED HIS TIE NERVOUSLY
and then forced his hands to his sides and tried to look casual. If someone had bet him that he’d one day dread a date with Carrie Johnstone more than any he’d ever had, he’d have lost a lot of money.

Despite a substantial effort on his part, Beamon hadn’t been able to come up with a single credible lie as to why he had to stop seeing her for a while. It looked like he was going to have to fall back on a rough approximation of the truth and hope he didn’t scare her off. That is, if this morning’s newspaper article hadn’t already done that for him.

Beamon knocked again, this time a bit harder. Emory wouldn’t be asleep this early—Carrie was probably in the back with a blow dryer running or something.

“Come on, Carrie,” he said to himself. It was starting to get cold, and he was getting more nervous by the minute.

Carrie finally answered the door dressed in an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, just as he raised his hand to knock again.

Beamon pointed to a splotch of faded paint on the sweatshirt. “I was suspended
with
pay, Carrie. I was actually planning on springing for a nice restaurant.”

She remained silent and took a step back in a way that was clearly not an invitation.

Beamon noticed that her eyes were tinged slightly pink. The aftermath of tears that had recently dried up. “Carrie. Are you all right? Did something happen to Emory?”

His words seemed to sting her. More than that, actually. They seemed to stagger her. She reached down to the small table next to the door and picked up something that looked like a business card.

“Carrie, what’s wrong with you?”

In answer to his question, she held the card out to him at arm’s length, tensing visibly when he reached for it.

“What is this?” Beamon asked, looking down at the clean white card with the words
Child Safety Administration
printed on it in authoritative black letters.

“Two men came here today,” she said in a voice so strange that Beamon had to look up to make sure she was actually the one speaking. “They told me that you’re being investigated for child molestation.”

Beamon felt his heart twitch as a quick burst of adrenaline surged through him. He started to take a step toward her, but stopped when she moved back again. “Carrie, this is bullshit. Look, I’m investigating a very powerful organization and they’re doing everything they can to discredit me. I was going to tell you about it tonight.” He held up the card. “I mean, Jesus Christ, there’s not even a phone number on this …” He let his voice trail off. She wasn’t listening. The tears he had thought were exhausted earlier started to shimmer in her eyes again and he remembered.
She’d left her daughter with him.

He looked into her face and saw horror, guilt,
and betrayal there. For a moment he was enraged. That the church would stoop to something like this. That Carrie would believe it. But then he remembered Jennifer’s uncle. David Passal had been run out of Oregon for similar unsubstantiated charges. And Beamon hadn’t for a moment questioned his guilt, only his motivation and ability to get at Jennifer.

What was it that Passal had said when Beamon had last seen him alive? Something about there being a plot of land down the hill—that he’d save it for him.

Beamon closed his eyes to block out Carrie’s face and the card that seemed to be burning in his hand. Passal had probably been a good guy. More than likely, he’d tried to help out his brother and sister-in-law, and for that he’d been condemned to dying alone in the bitter cold of the Utah mountains.

Beamon opened his eyes again, realizing there was nothing left to be said. He slipped the card into his pocket and turned away without looking up. “Good-bye, Carrie.” He walked slowly out onto the snow-covered walk and across the courtyard. Halfway to the parking area, he finally heard Carrie’s door push shut. A moment later, the laughing started.

Beamon stopped and watched Robert Andrews lean over the rail outside his second-floor condo for a moment and then walk inside his unit, still laughing. The small gap in the drapes, there since Andrews had moved in, disappeared. A clear message that the church no longer saw him as a threat.

Beamon felt the anger build in him until it was at the edge of his control. He’d spent the last
month screwing around, treating this like any other kidnapping case. And that had kept him from seeing the big picture—from believing that the church could actually mount an effective attack on him. He’d concentrated everything on offense, ignoring defense. And now Carrie, his job, his reputation were all gone—probably never to be recovered. He had no family to stand behind him and most of his friends would run hard and fast at this kind of trouble. They had their own lives and careers to worry about.

Beamon jumped over a small hedge and ran up the steps toward Andrews’s apartment, taking them two at a time. When he burst through the man’s front door, he was sitting calmly on his sofa. Waiting.

“What a surprise,” Andrews said, not rising from his position on the couch.

Beamon yanked his pistol from its holster and aimed it at the man’s face. He could feel the blood throbbing from his heart to his head to his gun hand.

“Oh, my!” Andrew said, mocking Beamon by throwing his hands up in a cartoonish display of terror. “A desperate man with a gun.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Beamon screamed, rushing forward and stopping with the barrel of the pistol only a few inches from the man’s nose. In his mind, he saw Andrews walking up to Carrie’s door and handing her that business card. He could see the expression on her face as she went back inside her home, knelt down, and looked into the eyes of her daughter.

“What is it you want exactly?” Andrews said, casually lowering his hands. Beamon followed their progress with his eyes, focusing on the band
around the man’s wrist. It was made of black iron, probably three-quarters of an inch wide and a quarter of an inch thick. A deep white scar had been carved into the man’s skin beneath the heavy bracelet. A souvenir from the torch that had been used to weld it in place.

Andrews moved his arm to better display the symbol of his devotion. “Well? What do you want?”

“I want to cut your heart out with a fucking spoon,” Beamon said through clenched teeth. “That’s what I want.”

Andrews rolled his eyes. “I’d heard that you were given to fits of melodrama. Now why don’t you run on home before you get yourself in any more trouble.”

Beamon pushed the gun closer until it was almost brushing the skin of the man’s forehead. “Get Sara Renslier on the phone. Now!”

Andrews ran his tongue slowly over the front of his teeth. “I’m not sure why she’d want to talk to you.”

Beamon flicked his wrist and caught Andrews in the mouth with the barrel of his pistol. The blow split the man’s lower lip and at the sight of the blood, Beamon’s control slipped a little farther away from him. He grabbed the handset of the phone from the table next to the sofa and slammed it into the side of the man’s head. “Do it now!”