The Adam Enigma (12 page)

Beecher found himself drenched in sweat.

Caine had taken off his wig and was oddly playful in an almost childlike way. He stroked Beecher's brow and said, “It wasn't your fault. We all have a little of that in us. Nothing to be ashamed of. Some more, some less. And now . . . you're free.”

Caine rose from the bed and walked over to an armoire near the door. He pulled out men's clothes and began to put them on. He sat at the table and removed the makeup, eyeing Beecher in the mirror. “You know that Adam Gwillt thing you wanted done. He's gone. I can assure you.”

“What?” Beecher's mind swirled under a load of feelings . . . shame, lust, embarrassment, anger, desire. He couldn't process words unless he listened very carefully. “What?” he repeated. “What did you say?”

“Adam Gwillt is gone.”

Caine stood up. All traces of Beatrice were gone from his face. He now wore Levis, a blue pastel shirt with a bolo tie, cowboy boots, and a dark gray Stetson.

Beecher thought, oddly, that Caine must have had a change of clothes in the room for afterwards.
But why? . . . Unless he planned it. . . . But how could he know about Big Jim? . . . It's impossible. Jim died years ago and I never told anyone.
He shook his head, clearing the thought.

He tumbled out of bed, staggered to the chair, grabbing it for support. “What's going on?” he shouted. The room was empty. He found his clothes in a heap by the table and put them on. He shook his head again, chasing the last vestige of Beatrice/Caine from his mind. He didn't want to think about what happened, but at the same time he remembered what Caine had said, “You're free.”

Beecher came down the stairs. “Let's go,” he said curtly.

“What happened?” Conklin asked.

“Nothing.”

The younger man's eyes narrowed. He craned his neck around. “Where's Beatrice . . . umm, Caine?”

“Gone.”

“What about Adam?”

Beecher breathed in deeply. Caine said he was free, but did he mean Adam or something more? “It's taken care of,” he told Conklin.

March 30, 2016
Taos, New Mexico

R
amsey normally accepted flying as a necessary evil, an integral part of being a modern human geographer. However, as the small regional turbojet screamed and bumped its way along the Rockies on his flight from Denver to Taos, New Mexico he couldn't help but reflect on his own death. It'd been a while since he had been absorbed by thoughts of his own demise. The last time was Peru.

Soon after he swallowed the ritual potion the shamans had prepared for him, he felt himself being devoured piece-by-piece into the belly of a monster. A part of him wanted to let go, but another part, driven by fear, fought back.

Fought for what?
Ramsey asked himself. He remembered:
I fought to be.
It was like two forces pulling on a rubber band. It snapped. Then there was nothing.
I shouldn't have fought.
He knew that now.

A violent shudder racked the thirty-passenger cabin. An overhead bin popped open and a backpack crashed into the aisle. Several passengers cried out. The lone flight attendant stayed buckled into her seat, but spoke over the intercom. “Stay in your seats. As soon as this choppiness smooths out, I'll get the cabin ship-shape again.”

The passenger sitting next to Ramsey chuckled. She was a young woman in a navy flight uniform. “That was a good one,” she said softly and went back to reading her iPad.

Ramsey found himself smiling too. After the initial jolt of fear when the first of the choppy air slammed into the plane, he had settled
into the sense of providence he had accepted over the past few years. While living in Grinnell he had come to understand that there were forces in play ready to guide him. Perhaps the same forces that were intensified at sacred places. Life had a plan for him if he would only listen. He understood now that the initial jolt of energy he got when he entered the Rio Chama de Milagro Shrine was another calling to cross whatever that boundary was that he had resisted so mightily before.
This time would be different.
His musing on his past life was replaced by excitement as he replayed in his head the fascinating text Pete Miami had sent him. “I found God. Come to Taos ASAP.”

On the flight from Des Moines to Denver Ramsey used his time to handle his daily grind of business emails. Internet connection on flights was a godsend to people like him —movers and shakers who used the information technology of the twenty-first century to virtually travel the world. He also had time to reflect on the New Gnostic website Orensen had given him to explore.

Ramsey knew well the controversies surrounding the ancient Gnostics. For many scholars it meant something more, something radically different than the ancient Christian sect Dan Brown depicted in his best-selling novel
The Da Vinci Code
, in which he fictionalized the legend of a purported lineage arising from the romantic union of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.

To some scholars the Gnostics were one of the first true Christian sects. They saw Jesus as a divine prophet and teacher. Because they refused to bow to the emerging Roman Catholic Church, they were hunted down and wiped out.
The key to understanding their perspective on Christianity was in their name
, Ramsey thought. It came from the Greek word
gnōstikos
, meaning “to know”—not in the sense of knowing mundane facts, but in the sense of experiencing the divine directly. Ramsey recollected reading that at ancient Gnostic prayer meetings, any Gnostic—man, woman, or child—could stand up and lead the group. The closest modern-day equivalent in Christianity was the Quakers.

However, Orensen's website was not particularly religious but rather typical of special-interest social media sites. It provided stories
of healings along with before-and-after pictures, plus other news about the shrine and more recently, updates about its apparent loss of healing power.

At first the site seemed random, as though some child had slapped painted handprints on his parent's kitchen wall. But when Ramsey had settled back and studied the layout, he observed how the members and the place itself seemed to be connected in some systematic way. As a human geographer, he knew something important was going on that he didn't yet understand.
There's a geographical pattern
.
I'm not getting it yet, but it will come
, he reassured himself.

One tab on the site was of particular interest to Ramsey. When he clicked on it, it opened to a familiar quotation. “Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” This Bible quote startled him when he read it because it had been a favorite saying of Paige. He wondered if she were a New Gnostic and was surprised to find himself disappointed her name didn't turn up on the website. He pressed the tab and the webpage turned like a book. Written in elegant medieval calligraphy were the words: “Join us people of the shrine and make the journey that will take you from darkness into the light.” There was nothing else on the page, and when he clicked on the sentence or any of the words, nothing happened.

Ramsey skyped Orensen to let him know what he was doing and to asked him about the mysterious tab.

The professor emeritus shrugged and said, “I don't know what it means. The digital world baffles me. Let me know what your friend Miami found. Be careful.”

Orensen's offhand denial of any knowledge of the mysterious tab troubled Ramsey because he was sure it was a portal to a deeper level within the site. He felt it was connected to the pattern he wasn't seeing.

Ramsey looked out the window and saw that the plane was following the Rio Grande as they descended toward the small single runway of the Taos Regional Airport. The bumpiness had disappeared and the backpack had been returned to its overhead compartment. Passengers were once more calm while the flight attendant reminded
everyone to put away their electronic devices and make sure their tray tables and seatbacks were in their original upright positions.

Once more his mind drifted back to the New Gnostic site. What was overwhelming were the many kinds of miraculous healings. The number and the passion with which they were told were staggering. Then Ramsey was reminded of an obvious point: All sacred places, all religions for that matter, were based on stories of miracles, real or purported.
Could it be that a new religion is forming around the Milagro Shrine?
he asked himself.

He settled into his seat. Pete would be picking him up at the airport.
This is going to be fun
, he thought.
Pete is one of my all-time favorite people and if he said he found God, he found God!

March 30, 2016
Taos, New Mexico

B
eecher shaded his eyes as he looked out the window. The small regional jet was traveling over the windward side of the Sangre de Christo Mountains. Below him the lush forest was dark green with patches of late snow nestled beneath overhangs of valleys. The dense foliage reminded Beecher of Vietnam and of the dangers and slaughter he had experienced when half his platoon was wiped out in a firefight with the Viet Cong.
I haven't thought about those men in many years. Is that okay?
He didn't know. They had all been young and raw, draftees mostly, and had only been together for a week, everyone wishing they were home—except Beecher, who strangely found war more peaceful than his childhood. He did three tours before coming back to Texas and was not wounded once.

He looked out the window once more and saw Taos in the distance. It was late afternoon but still plenty of time to make it to the meeting after they landed.

“The plane won't touchdown for another ten minutes,” Beecher said to Conklin seated next to him on the plane.

The younger man nodded. Conklin was a pragmatist, a businessman, and a bit of an adventurer. He was fascinated by the exercise of power. He had never really bought into the mission of the Brothers of the Lord, but the members' connections had proven useful to him on a number of occasions. After all, Conklin was a person who did what he had to do to grow and protect his financial interests. He
was particularly fascinated with Beecher's wheeling for power and pleased that he had taken him under his wing.

Conklin was unsure why Beecher pleaded with him to accompany him on this trip. But he was sure it had to do with the Reverend Billy Paul, the Milagro Shrine and the disappearance of Adam Gwillt. It was easy to see something was wrong. Beecher was normally a take-charge leader, demanding immediate response to his orders. But ever since Reverend Paul had instructed him to remove Adam, he was sounding unsure of himself. In the last two weeks the lines around the man's eyes and mouth had deepened. His gaze darted around as Conklin imagined he did while on patrol in Vietnam. Conklin relaxed and waited, knowing Beecher would eventually tell him what was going on.
Isn't that what Caine hinted at?

As the plane cruised towards the runway, Beecher ran through all the events that had led up to this point. He needed to be clear about what he was going to tell Conklin.

Two days after meeting Caine at Oilcan Harry's, Beecher had heard for the first time, from someone other than Caine, that Adam had actually disappeared. Myriam had been to the shrine for one of the frequent workshops given by the Friends of the Shrine. She had called him that night, her voice near tears.

“Hiram, you have to come up,” she said. “He's gone.”

“Who?”

“Adam.”

“When?”

“Five days ago.”

Beecher remembered how surprised he was that Adam had disappeared before meeting Caine at Oilcan Harry's. “He's left the shrine before, hasn't he?” Beecher had asked.

“Never.”

He flew into Albuquerque the next morning and picked up the truck he kept at a vehicle storage facility. An hour and a half later he was at the shrine. Myriam came out of the Christ Chapel to greet him.

She held him fiercely saying over and over, “He's gone . . . gone . . . gone.”

“Are you sure?”

She pulled back and nodded. He saw the red face, eyes puffy from crying. “Can't you feel it?” she asked. “Everyone else can. It's why we're so worried. The energy is gone, like someone turned the stove off.”

Beecher had never felt anything at the shrine except that sense of peace. As his gaze swept over the grounds, it had all looked and felt the same as always. Except today it was covered in snow. “What about his sister, Carlotta? Has she said anything?”

“She was inconsolable. She was hysterical, worried that maybe her brother had wandered off and was in danger. She told me, ‘Since the accident Adam's never gone anywhere. He didn't want to and he couldn't even if he did. His best friend from Iowa, Malcolm Grossinger, took him once on a trip someplace, but they were back early the next morning.'”

“What about the authorities?”

“The County Sheriff deputies are leading search parties all over the area. Nothing has turned up.”

The plane leveled off. Off the right wing, Beecher could see the Taos Pueblo below. As the jet began its decent, he recalled how the search had been called off after a couple of weeks. Since then the only mention of Adam's disappearance had been short updates in the local newspaper about how the beloved caretaker of the Rio Chama Milagro Shrine had disappeared. It asked anyone with any information to contact the shrine.

The hardest part for Beecher at the time had been deciding what to tell the Reverend Billy Paul about the disappearance of Adam. He had thought about lying and taking responsibility for Adam's disappearance. But, what if Adam suddenly showed up again? He hadn't even wanted to think about that scenario. Instead he had told the Reverend he had had nothing to do with Adam's disappearance, saying he had set something in motion but Adam disappeared before the assassination could take place. Unexpectedly, the Reverend was nonplussed with the news. Beecher recalled thinking it was like he already knew. The Reverend had said he would get back to him. At the time Beecher was greatly relieved. Although puzzled by Adam's
disappearance, he had assumed someone else had killed him. In addition, Beecher's suppositions about Adam's miraculous powers had been confirmed as he watched the Milagro Shrine immediately lose its healing capacity now that Adam was no longer there. In any case, Adam was no longer his problem.

Then to Beecher's chagrin, the Adam enigma had started all over again three months later. That's when the phone call from the Reverend Billy Paul had come.

“Adam's not dead,” the televangelist had announced angrily. “His existence is a greater problem than ever. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to hire this famous human geographer Jonathan Ramsey. He's our best hope of finding Adam.” Surprisingly the Reverend Billy Paul knew about Ramsey's relationship with Myriam. “Tell her she should bring him in to investigate what happened to the shrine,” the evangelist had said. “Ramsey will lead us to Adam.

“I cannot stress, Brother Beecher, as I said before, just how important it is to the work of the Brothers of the Lord that we find Adam Gwillt immediately.”

Beecher had agreed reluctantly, and brought the idea up with Myriam that night—to her great surprise. Beecher told her that some of his folks researched who could figure out what happened at the Milagro Shrine and Jonathan Ramsey was at the top of the list. “My people believe Adam's not dead,” he said.

Myriam had had reservations because she and Ramsey had not parted on good terms, but upon hearing the hopeful tone in Beecher's voice, she agreed that he should do all that Reverend Paul had asked of him.

The last call from Brother Paul had come two days ago. The Reverend had been upbeat. “Brother Beecher, hiring Jonathan Ramsey has already paid big dividends in the search for Adam Gwillt.”

“I'm glad to have helped out,” Beecher had answered. At the time he had thought he was free. And could go back to Myriam with no secrets.

Then Paul added, “I have another job for you. Go to Taos, where you will be met by people who need your help in ending the Milagro Shrine and Adam Gwillt's sacrilege.”

Beecher was becoming angry with himself about how he had let himself get into this troubling situation. After the Reverend had hung up, Beecher realized he needed help. There was no one he could really turn to. Then it occurred to him that Sam Conklin was the only one he felt confident of. After the evening with Caine they had shared a bond that went beyond the Brothers of the Lord. And Sam was resourceful. So Beecher had made a decision. Assessing his reaction step-by-step, Beecher would let Sam Conklin in on what was happening.
I need somebody to cover my back.

These were the exact words Beecher told Conklin as the plane taxied to a stop at the Taos airport.

Conklin scratched at the mustache above his long upper lip.
Now it all makes sense
, he told himself.
Beecher's out on a limb and he needs backup.

He wondered how far he should go in helping Beecher once again. The man had been fanatical when Beecher asked his help in his pursuit of the aims of the Brothers of the Lord concerning the shrine and Adam Gwillt. But now Beecher's concern had shifted from Adam Gwillt to himself.

Conklin thought back to Oilcan Harry's. Caine had come down the stairs alone. He sauntered over to where Conklin was sitting, slid next to him and waited, his mouth in a patient smile.

Conklin recalled glancing at the stairs and not seeing Beecher anywhere. His heart had thudded in his chest, and his mind went inexorably to the murder of Ketterman. Conklin had wondered if Beecher would ever come down.

Then Caine had leaned close, his lips right at Conklin's ear. “Hiram Beecher has gone over and come back. He'll need your help just as I helped you with Ketterman.”

Caught by the sincere authority in Caine words Conklin had only been able to say, “How should I help him?”

“You'll know when he asks you.”

Caine had then winked and left.

The jet's passengers began to debark. Conklin studied the hard-lined face beside him, saw the plea for help in the drawn mouth. He felt closer to Beecher than he could ever let on.

Without hesitation Conklin said, “Whatever you need, Hiram.”

After renting an SUV at the airport, the two men drove immediately to the chalet. On the way there, Beecher reminded Conklin how Caine had insinuated at Oilcan Harry's that the Adam issue that already been taken care of.

Conklin took a deep breath. “You mean somebody killed him?”

“That's what I thought at the time,” Beecher said, letting his distaste come through. “But it turns out he just disappeared one day. I can't tell you how much relieved I was.”

“But that wasn't the end of it?”

“No, the Reverend Paul has become obsessed with finding him. He demanded that I hire a former associate of Myriam's, Jonathan Ramsey, to investigate what happened to the shrine's healing power. Brother Paul was convinced that somehow Dr. Ramsey's going to lead us to Adam.”

“And did he?”

“That's why I'm here, why you're here.”

“They found him in Taos?”

“I think so. Dr. Ramsey supposedly led them here. In any case I'll soon find out. Brother Paul set up a meeting for me with some people from South Africa.”

“South Africa, it doesn't make sense, I don't understand.”

“Me neither; something's not right.”

“What do you need me to do?”

Beecher thought,
So far so good. The real test will come when we get to the chalet
.

“I'll explain when we get settled.” Conklin's confusion must have shown clearly on his face because Beecher instantly added, “I know this must sound puzzling to you, but all I can ask is that you trust me.” He smile. “In some ways I'm becoming more like you.”

Conklin nodded, weighing the unknowns around this trip with Beecher's uncharacteristic openness. He decided he was still in. “How's that?”

“I know you've never bought into the brotherhood's mission. I'm having my own doubts now.”

Conklin registered no surprise. “Something to do with what happened at the bar?”

Beecher was not ready to tell anyone what happened upstairs at Oilcan Harry's. So he dodged the question. “Among other things.”

Conklin sensed that Beecher needed something from him.

“You know, for a while after I met Caine, I gained a kind of calmness. You probably noticed that too. I'm here partly because of that.” Beecher pointed to an inn on a hillside above the road. “That's where we're staying.”

Located 15 miles from Taos airport, the Edelweiss chalet was closed for the season. However, the owner was an old military buddy of Beecher's, so accommodations for him and Conklin were easily arranged.

A middle-aged man with a heavy German accent greeted them. He managed the chalet for Beecher's buddy. He pointed to where they should park their vehicle.

The German manager provided each of them with a comfortable room and opened the kitchen, putting out coffee and pastries.

When they were alone, Hiram pulled out a smartphone from his coat pocket and handed it to Conklin. Next he took what appeared to be a large ink pen out of his coat pocket. “Here's how we'll stay in touch. It's the latest in personal communication devices,” he explained. He pushed a button on the top of the pen and the smart phone's screen lit up with a map of Northern New Mexico. A neon green light appeared just outside of Taos. Longitude and latitude appeared beside it. “We'll be able to communicate by voice and most importantly you'll be able to track my movements. I'll contact you when I know more. I'm turning it off now. If it comes on and I don't communicate with you, start tracking me. You have your gun?”