Authors: Chuck Barrett
T
he temperature dropped enough
during the night to blanket the island in fog. After they checked out of the hotel, Jake drove the rental car east on Centre Street, the main road in Fernandina Beach's historic district, until it turned into Atlantic Avenue. Following the directions from the nighttime desk clerk, he turned north on 14
th
Street and drove the
mile or so
until he reached his destination.
He pulled into the Bosque Bello Cemetery. A police cruiser was waiting for them. After introductions, Jake and Francesca followed the officer to the scene of the crime.
Jake scanned the misty copse of live oaks whose canopy hung over the back section of the graveyard. Sunlight struggled to break through the thick fog. Droplets of moisture danced across the broken beams of light. In the distance, crime scene tape marked off an open grave. The air was still and sticky and the few patches of grass were covered in the morning's dew. It reminded Jake of a scene from an old horror film. Ironically that story took place in a small coastal town, much like this one, and involved a strange glowing fog that rolled in from the ocean.
He and Francesca were two paces behind the officer. "Was the glass in the casket broken?" Jake asked.
"No. Looks like all they did was dig up the casket. Can't tell if it was even opened." The officer stopped and turned around. "To be honest, if we hadn't received a call so soon after we found it, we would have just stuck him back in the ground." The officer pointed to the hole in the ground. "But we were instructed to do a thorough crime scene investigation."
"Fingerprints?" Jake asked.
"None."
"Shoe impressions?" Francesca asked.
"None." The officer walked to the side of the grave and pointed to the ground slowly moving his finger toward the grass line in the cemetery. "Actually, whoever did this was careful enough to cover his tracks all the way to the grass so we couldn't get any usable impressions. He knew what he was doing."
"Or she." Francesca asserted.
"Yes ma'am. I guess that's possible. Or she." The officer pointed to two piles of dirt. "One other thing about the perp, could be left-handed." He moved to a spot next to the grave. "He…or she, stood here and dug, tossing the dirt here." He pointed to the pile next to him. Then he pointed to a depression on the other side of the grave and the pile of dirt. "And stood there and tossed the dirt to that pile."
"Could've been two diggers working in synchrony." Jake said.
The officer pushed his hand under his hat and scratched his scalp. "Could be. We never considered two diggers, but it's possible."
Jake pointed to a corner of the lower section of the casket. "Was the top liner pulled loose there and folded underneath?"
The officer looked astonished. "How could you know that? You haven't even seen the pictures yet."
"Bet our soldier was black." Francesca said.
"That's right. But—"
"We've seen the same thing at other cemeteries." Jake looked at Francesca.
Jake's cell phone rang. He looked at the Caller-ID, Fontaine. "Excuse me, I have to take this." Jake turned and walked away leaving Francesca to wrap things up with the officer.
Jake answered the call. "George, what's up?"
"Jake, your meeting tonight with President Rudd has been moved up to 10:00 p.m."
"No problem. We're almost finished here then we'll be on our way."
"Sorry, Jake. Project Resurrection is growing."
"Project Resurrection?"
"Yep. Project Resurrection. Don't blame me, Wiley and Rudd came up with the name." Fontaine explained. "Apparently an older usage of the term
resurrect
was used the same as
exhume
or
disinter
is today."
"Sounds biblical."
"It does. Anyway, there have been two more reports. One in Savannah and one in Charleston. Wiley wants you to check them both out before coming back to D.C."
"Has any of this leaked to the press? We don't need any copy cats."
"No leaks that I know of, just more problems." George interrupted. "The grave in Savannah belongs to a black man."
"The one here was a black man as well and it's the same M. O. as the ones in Arlington and Andersonville."
"What do you think that means?" Fontaine asked.
"I don't know, George. But I intend to find out."
H
is mother had been so upset
he had abducted the wrong person that she didn't speak to him the entire day. How was he to know that Sam Connors was Samantha Connors? It only made sense that the woman at the house was Ashley. He'd never even considered that she had a roommate.
His mother's silence was actually a welcome relief, he thought, because two nights ago when she found out Samantha Connors wasn't Ashley Regan, her reaction was insane.
He watched as his mother grabbed a large needle and plunged it deep into the woman's neck. Blood spewed onto the stainless steel table in spurts flowing down toward the woman's feet and into a drain at the lower end of the table.
"No." He yelled. "You can't do this."
She glared at him. He saw pure evil in her eyes. His greatest fear realized. "We have to do this. We have to protect this family. The whole family. Not just you and me, but this business as well. And your twin."
"But this woman had no part."
"Scott, if you hadn't kidnapped the wrong woman, we wouldn't be in this predicament in the first place. I'm cleaning up your mess. No loose ends." Heidi turned her attention back to the woman. "It'll be over soon, honey…it'll be over soon."
His mother stroked the young woman's hair like a loving mother comforting a sick child. Samantha's face grew ashen. He'd dealt with the dead for many decades but he'd never watched anyone die. The woman's eyes closed for the last time and blood stopped flowing from the needle. Samantha Connors, a victim of mistaken identity, was dead.
Heidi looked at Scott. "Prepare the crematorium. We need to destroy anything and everything that could link us to this woman. She's small, set the retort for 90 minutes. That should be more than enough."
He turned to leave, then glanced back. His mother was stroking the dead woman's hair again. The woman who gave birth to him, whom he loved, had gone mad…or had she always been insane? And he was helpless to do anything about it because in the eyes of the law, he knew he was just as guilty as she was. His mother was right about one thing; they did have to protect the family. All of it.
Katzer tried to compose himself and looked at his daily calendar, a family consultation and two funerals. The family consultation was scheduled in ten minutes. He thought he had time for another cup of coffee and then get back to business as if nothing had ever happened until the receptionist buzzed his office informing him that his consultation had arrived early. His palms were sticky. He went to the restroom and splashed water on his face. The man in the mirror looked haggard. He dried off, slipped on his dress coat and headed to meet the family.
Katzer joined the family in the conference room where he usually held all consultations. He'd known the family for years. The man in front of him had been in the Nashville Rotary Club with him for years. He'd socialized with the man and his wife and now, at 65, she was dead.
He began with the usual formalities of gathering information for the death certificate. It usually helped to get the difficult process started. After that he moved to the obituary. Katzer knew this was the part where he had to drag information out with a series of questions. Grieving family members seemed to have difficulty thinking of obituary wording, so Katzer did it for them. On rare occasions someone would walk in the door with an obituary already written. This was not one of those times. Excluding the obvious, Katzer asked the man about his wife's relatives, living and dead, schools attended, occupation or occupations in this case, church, social activities, and involvement in charity work. Something he knew the man's wife had been heavily involved in.
He asked about the type of service and where it would be held. The man had little trouble with this. As an active member of the largest Episcopal Church in Nashville, there was little doubt about selecting a church or priest for the ceremony. The man had little trouble in the casket room either. He seemed to know the casket his wife would have preferred as soon as he entered the room. Which was quite unusual because Katzer Funeral Home's casket room offered a very large selection of caskets. Several times larger than his closest competitor.
Katzer left the man in the conference room and told him he would return shortly with an itemized cost sheet. He handed the receptionist his notes. "Sylvia, will you prepare Mr. Parker's estimate?"
"Certainly, Mr. Katzer. Mike is waiting for you in your office again."
"Did he say what he wanted?"
"No, sir. Just that he needed to talk to you."
Katzer turned and headed for his office. If the cemetery manager was in his office it usually meant he would have to spend money. Sometimes, a lot of money. Something got damaged or a piece of equipment broke. It was never good news, only bad.
The cemetery manager stood when Katzer walked in. He'd been cemetery manager at Mt Olivet for over fifteen years. Katzer had personally recommended him. His appearance then was neatly groomed with short hair, average height, and very slim. No, skinny was a better description. The man he was looking at now had changed over the years. An easy forty pounds overweight, his now thinning gray hair was long and oily and pulled back into a ponytail. The top went bald years ago and the man kept it covered with a baseball cap. His hands were always grimy, clothes crumpled, and worst of all, he smelled. When his wife left him seven years ago, so it seemed, did his personal hygiene. Katzer sat on the corner of his desk.
"Mike, what do you need?" Katzer's tone was rather matter of fact. Not rude, but down to business.
"We had a break-in last night in Section 2."
"A break-in? What kind of break-in?"
"The Beckel crypt. Found the door busted in about ten minutes ago."
Katzer's heart skipped a beat. "Which casket?" He already knew the answer but he needed to hear it.
"Looks like they started with Andrew. The kid who died in the war. But all of them were broken into."
"How could you tell who they started with?"
"His casket was in the middle of the crypt, busted and torn to pieces. The parents' and grandparents' caskets were pulled down on top of his."
He knew too well what that meant. His mother told him about the Beckel crypt when she revealed everything else to him. About his stepfather. About his real father. This meant only one thing. Ashley Regan has the book and has been here. Only one day after his mother killed the woman's roommate. He could visualize his mother's reaction to the news. Her eyes ice cold, filled with anger. She would give him that sharp, penetrating stare, like she was measuring his value to her, then she would lash out at him again for abducting the wrong woman.
"Mr. Katzer? Excuse me. Should I call the cops?"
The question actually startled him. He'd just expected the cemetery manager had already made that call. "How much damage?"
"Quite a lot. Jimmied the door, broke the lock, and took a sledgehammer to the marble vault. Then they pulled the casket into the middle of the crypt and busted it open."
"Let's wait a bit to call the police, Mike. I don't want to alarm our customers." Katzer stood. "Anyone else know about the break-in?"
"No, I came straight here after I saw it. Haven't even finished my rounds yet. You want me to have someone from the maintenance shop go up and fix the door?"
"No, Mike." Katzer said. "Don’t' tell anyone else just yet. Fix the door yourself. I want to read over our insurance policy again before I file a police report. I might try to handle this one under the table with the Beckel family. If I remember correctly, they seemed easy to deal with, so maybe I can work out an arrangement. Avoid negative publicity. I'd rather the media not get a hold of it."
"I understand." The man stood and walked toward the door.
"Thanks, Mike." Katzer called out.
The man didn't stop, just a raised a hand in acknowledgement.
He was wrong about his mother's reaction. Heidi Katzer sat in his office and seemed to take the news in stride. She actually seemed happy about it. He figured she was just having a good day. At her age the chasms in her moods swings were massive and, it seemed, dependent on how she felt that day. When she felt good, she was almost giddy. When she felt bad, she was a bear. The night she tortured and killed the woman had been a bad day, he thought.
"This is good news," she said.
"Good news?" Scott said. "How the hell is this good news?"
"Don't you see? If someone wanted to see inside Andrew Beckel's grave that proves the book has been found. And it means that Ashley Regan has the book." She smiled a devilish grin. "Imagine her surprise when she found it empty."
"It was probably not the first one she's hit." Scott said.
"That makes it even better."
"I don't understand. Why would that make it better?"
"Because it being empty was unexpected. It'll knock her off kilter." Heidi grabbed a small bottle from her purse and rubbed lotion over her wrinkled hands. "And if she's off kilter, she may make a mistake. When that happens, we got her…and my journal."
A
fter the tenth
ring Ashley Regan hung up. Sam Connors still wasn't answering the phone. It had been two weeks since their argument on the phone. She tried to explain her need to stay longer with her distraught friend Christa, but Sam pitched one of her hissy fits. Apparently Sam couldn't understand why Ashley would take so much time off work over a friend's relationship problems. In a way, Sam had a point, but when Sam hung up on her, Ashley didn't call her back right away.
She assumed by now Sam would be over her temperamental refusal to communicate. It had always been how she handled discord between them. She'd get mad, storm off, and refuse to speak. On the phone or face-to-face. Although a bit immature, she still was a caring, loving partner. Flaws and all.
Christa was driving the rental car, a Chevy Impala they'd paid cash in advance for a one-week rental. Their next stop was a small family plot in Butler, Tennessee. If the journal was accurate, that's where they would hit the jackpot. But the journal had been wrong in Nashville. The casket in the marble crypt did not contain the item listed in the journal. None of the caskets in the crypt contained it either. And for the first time since their adventure began, Regan and Christa came away empty handed.
The turn of bad luck began in Dahlonega when a cop making his nightly rounds spotted their car in the cemetery. She and Christa ducked when they saw headlights coming down the street and panicked when the cruiser pulled into the cemetery. They grabbed their gear, tossed it in the car, and fled the cemetery while the cop car was on the adjacent part of the circular drive. Fortunately for them, he didn't pursue.
Their first mistake. Regan was determined that was their last. She'd been careful to ensure their movements were untraceable. She didn't want to be 'on the grid' as they say. Everything paid for in cash. No credit cards to track their movements. They changed rental cars after each cemetery. And now that Christa had scored them fake driver's licenses, Regan felt untouchable.
She wanted to start with the local Charleston graveyard but resisted the temptation. The small out-of-town cemeteries were less of a risk so she opted to practice on cemeteries with very little traffic reducing their chance of getting caught. She had never dug up anything the size of a casket before and wanted to make a test run to determine what unexpected problems might be encountered. She was convinced that trial and error practice would help them gain the skills they needed to get in, retrieve the secreted item, and get out without being detected…or caught.
Their first attempt was a bust. They were unprepared. After more planning, Regan and Christa developed an equipment list and made another trip to an out-of-town hardware store to acquire the tools necessary to accomplish the task. Next, a dry run on a cemetery not listed in the journal. That rehearsal proved helpful and warranted another trip to a different hardware store. Now, the two women knew they were ready.
She was nervous when they finally hit the Charleston cemetery, the same cemetery her parents were buried in. Her hands shook with anticipation of what they would discover. She kept expecting the unexpected to happen any minute. It didn't. Regan and Christa were in and out of the graveyard in record time, prize in hand.
Nestled on Watauga Lake in the northeastern corner of Tennessee, Butler was a long drive from Charleston. Regan and Christa made a stop in Banner Elk, North Carolina for the night. The hotel was a cheap imitation log cabin lodge with ten rooms. While she was checking in she noticed the neon sign hanging over the entrance change from "VACANCY" to "NO VACANCY." The manager seemed to appreciate the cash she presented at check-in and asked no questions.
When they got to their room, Regan tossed her bag on the floor. "I guess this is their idea of 'rustic charm.' I have another description for it."
Christa Barnett flipped on the bathroom light. "Looks clean in here." She walked over to a bed and pulled down the sheets. "Beds are clean. Linen's been changed. So it ain't the Hilton, big deal. It's only for a couple of nights."
"Thieves can't be choosey, right?" Regan laughed.
"Let's go eat, I'm starving." Christa walked toward the door.
She pulled out her cell phone. "Let me try calling Sam again, then we'll go." She dialed the number and let it ring. When Connors voice mail answered, she hung up.
"Guess she's still pissed, huh?" Christa said. "She's acting kind of childish, don't you think?"
"I guess so. It's not like her to give me the silent treatment for this long." Ashley Regan couldn't imagine why Sam still wouldn't answer. They'd had spats in the past but none had ever lasted more than a day or two.
J
ake pushed
the backpack strap higher on his right shoulder while he waited for Francesca to authenticate her identity to gain entrance into the Commonwealth Consultants building from the subterranean parking garage. After she entered, it was his turn. Only one at a time was allowed through the door. Those were Wiley's security rules and the guards, all former Special Forces, got upset if the rules weren't obeyed.
The seven-story, all-glass building in Fairfax, Virginia was deceptive in appearance since the only windows in the entire building were in the top-floor penthouse suite. Behind the exterior glass veneer were two steel-reinforced solid concrete walls. Between each wall a two-inch lead lining. No signals got in. No signals got out. Even the penthouse had lead-lined walls and lead infused glass windows. If anyone knew how to shield a building, it was Elmore Wiley.
Jake entered the same 24-character password into the keypad followed by a thumbprint on the scanner. The door clicked and he entered the lobby through an enhanced body-screening unit. The unit didn't screen for weapons, since weapons weren't unusual at Commonwealth. Its technology was more sophisticated. The unit sniffed for explosives and scanned for electronic eavesdropping devices on everyone and everything that entered the building.
The lobby was a small fifteen-foot square room with three armed guards. Mounted on the wall next to the steel door was a retina scan unit. After passing the retina scan, Wiley's facial recognition software confirmed his identity and allowed Jake passage into the operations center where he found Francesca waiting. He wondered if all the security measures weren't overkill but, he figured, in Wiley's line of business there was no such thing as being too careful. One security breach and his business could evaporate overnight.
They took the elevator to the fourth floor and repeated the same drill without the guards and scanner. Required here was the same 24-digit password and thumbprint—opposite thumb than before—an added layer of security for this most sensitive area of Wiley's business. Inside George Fontaine monitored video feeds from Iran, Yemen, and Syria.
"Looks like Commonwealth might get involved in the Middle East. The Fellowship wants to topple a couple of governments but doesn't want us to send any assets. Too volatile, the Council said." Fontaine never looked away from the screens. "Jake, Mr. Wiley is in the penthouse. Said he's going to the meeting with you tonight."
"George, I need access to the mainframe for a couple of hours. Can you plug me in?" Jake pulled off the backpack, unzipped the top. "There has to be a common denominator with all these incidents and I really need to find something before the meeting tonight."
"Those arrangements have already been made." Fontaine said. "Wiley had me route an access terminal to the penthouse. He wants you and Francesca up there at eight o'clock."
"At eight? That's less than ten minutes from now."
"Yup." Fontaine shrugged his shoulders. "Take it up with the old man. I'm just the messenger."
"I'll let him know we're here." Francesca walked to the far wall and picked up the phone.
"How about doing me a favor while I'm up there?" Jake asked.
"I'll do it if you tell me your secret."
"What are you talking about?"
Fontaine lowered his voice and whispered to Jake. "I want to know how you always end up with good looking women around you. First Kyli. And now Francesca."
"Francesca's my partner." Jake leaned down next to Fontaine's ear. "How the hell did you know about Kyli?"
"Common knowledge around here. The boss's granddaughter dating an emissary is water cooler gossip." Fontaine explained. "News travels fast. Just keep in mind the consequences."
"What consequences?"
Francesca walked up next to Jake. "Wiley wants us upstairs now."
"Some guys have all the luck." Fontaine quipped.
"What's he talking about?" Francesca asked.
"Nothing." Jake scribbled something on a piece of paper. "Here's the address of the cemetery in Charleston. The traffic signal at the entrance has surveillance cameras. Since there's only one way in and out of the graveyard after hours, I thought we might get lucky and find our intruder."
"
If
I can hack into Charleston's traffic control center," Fontaine turned to face Jake. He took the paper. "Then I'll let you know what I find before you leave."
Two minutes later Jake and Francesca entered the penthouse and found Wiley waiting for them on the couch watching CNN and Fox on a split screen TV.
"Good, you're here." Wiley stood, pushed up his glasses, and made his trademark hair swipe. He walked over and shook Francesca's hand followed by Jake's. He pointed to a small office with a computer terminal on the desk. "Jake, you can get to work while I talk to Francesca."
The next ninety minutes passed by faster than he expected. He thought he heard the elevator a couple of times but was so entrenched in his work that he never turned around. After he was finished, he printed two copies of his report and logged off the computer.
Jake found Wiley sitting alone with a folder in his hand. "Where's Francesca?"
"I gave her another assignment. You won't need her on this one." Wiley raised the folder in the air. "George brought this up here for you. He said you'd know what to do with it."
Jake took the folder and scanned its contents. Good news and bad news. Which seemed to be the way this entire puzzle had been. Two steps forward, one step back. Jake looked at his watch. "Sir. We should get going."
"Something has come up that I must personally attend to. You'll be meeting with the President alone in the Oval Office." Wiley paused. It was apparent to Jake the Old Man was letting his news reach full impact. "Welcome to the big leagues, Jake. Only a handful of people ever get that opportunity."