Authors: Chuck Barrett
T
he lack
of windows at the Katzer Funeral Home made it impossible to locate Wiley from the outside.
After walking the perimeter with Francesca, Jake realized the only way to locate the Old Man was to enter the building. What he would give to have the RTI unit now. One of Wiley's many
toys
, using strategically placed sensors, the enhanced radio tomographic imaging unit would have allowed him to use radio waves to scan through the walls of the funeral home, locate, and track the movements of every occupant inside. He'd used it successfully a year ago in Yemen on a rescue mission and knew it would come in handy now.
Jake and Francesca met at the side door where Katzer's van was parked. Jake tried the double glass doors but they were locked. He motioned to Francesca who pulled out her lock-picking tool and unlocked the door.
"How do you think Wiley got in?" He asked.
"Same way we did, I guess," she said, "he picked the lock."
"That doesn't make sense. Why would he lock it back? He knew we were coming."
"Maybe he didn't lock it." She paused. "Maybe someone else did."
"In that case." Jake pulled out his handgun. Francesca followed suit. "They might be expecting us." He eased the door open hoping no chime would sound alerting the Katzers of their intrusion. None did. The receiving foyer was a fifteen-foot wide hallway that extended for twenty feet before it ended. Two opposing narrower halls extended perpendicular to the landing, one toward the front of the funeral home, and one toward the back.
The one to the front was dark.
"It's got to be this way." Jake motioned to the rear of the building.
Francesca nodded.
The hallway stretched all the way to the back of the building before making a ninety-degree turn. The lights were off in the hall but Jake could see the glow from an illuminated room coming from around the corner.
Two doors on the right. One on the left. All empty. The doors on the right were offices, the one on the left was the preparation room. A vast assortment of makeup and applicators lined the racks and shelves. An exit door along the rear wall of the building was labeled
Crematorium
.
Jake took a quick glance around the corner. The hallway was empty. A door at the end of the hall was open and the room occupied. He heard voices. He turned to Francesca, she was holding her finger in front of her lips. She'd heard them too.
He reached the doorway and glimpsed inside the room, almost everything was stainless steel. The room glistened under the bright overhead lights. Three white tables were pushed against a far wall with what looked like huge vents hovering over each one. On one table was a woman covered in a blanket. He assumed she was Abigail Love.
The table next to her—Elmore Wiley.
A tall thin man paced the floor muttering to himself. Had to be Scott Katzer, Jake thought. There was no sign of the old woman.
Jake signaled Francesca and they entered the room, guns drawn.
The man looked at Jake.
"You."
S
cott Katzer was shocked
when the man and the woman walked in the room pointing their guns at him. He didn't recognize her, but the man's face he knew. He was the man who brandished the gun in Charleston and kicked in the front door of Ashley Regan's house. The man whose presence prompted him to call 9-1-1.
"Guess I know why you're here," he said.
The man nodded at the woman. She walked over and freed the old man from the embalming table.
"Mr. Wiley, you okay?" She asked him.
"I'm fine."
"Why didn't you wait for us?" The younger man asked the older man.
"I thought I'd storm the Castle."
"What was all that talk about knowing the lay of the land first?" The younger man rebuked.
"Things didn't exactly go as planned." The old man pointed. "This woman is very sick."
"Is that Abigail Love?" The younger man asked.
"Who is Abigail Love?" Katzer asked. "All I know is this is the woman who followed you from Ashley Regan's house in Charleston to Butler, Tennessee. How she knew to go there is anyone's guess."
"She's an assassin," the young woman said. "She was paid to locate and acquire the book." She pointed to the young man. "And then kill him."
"She won't be killing anybody anytime soon," Katzer said. "I don't know what's wrong with her but whatever it is, she's getting worse."
"She has the bends," the younger man said. "Decompression sickness. If she doesn't get to a hyperbaric chamber soon, she will die. It might be too late already. She was deep underwater for too long when something startled her. She ascended too fast with no decompression stops. She has excess nitrogen bubbles in her bloodstream which have lodged throughout her body."
The younger man walked over to the embalming table where the sick woman was lying. He checked her vital signs. "Her real name was Deborah Layne." He pulled the blanket over the woman's head. "And she's dead."
"Good riddance, I say." Scott Katzer recognized his mother's voice.
She was standing in the doorway pointing a gun at the three intruders.
"
D
rop your weapons
," the old woman shouted. She had the leather journal clutched in one hand.
Jake made a quick assessment of their predicament. He nodded and dropped his handgun to the floor. Francesca did the same.
"Now. Both of you use a foot and kick the guns to me," she ordered, "and don't try anything. I may be old but I can still pull a trigger."
Jake and Francesca did as she requested. Jake instinctively brushed his arm against his waistband. The pocketknife Wiley gave him last year was concealed there. Jake always carried his knife. Just like Francesca always had a dagger strapped on the inside of her right leg. He looked at her. Her eye blink was imperceptible to anyone but him.
"Scott, get over here and collect their guns."
Scott Katzer collected the weapons, tucked one behind his belt and held the other on Jake, Wiley, and Francesca.
"All of these women have been difficult." She pointed at a table with the barrel of the gun. The table with the dead Abigail Love lying on it. "This one always groaning and wouldn't shut up. Then there was that Ashley Regan woman who took my book," the old woman held up the journal, "and gallivanted all over the countryside stealing what was rightfully mine."
"Rightfully yours?" Jake said.
"Yes." The woman shook the gun at him. Her face flushed. "Rightfully mine." She looked at Scott. "There was also that woman you grabbed by mistake."
"Sam Connors?"
"
Samantha
Connors." The old woman corrected. "Ashley Regan's roommate."
"What did you do to her?"
Silence.
"What did you do to her?" Jake stared at the old woman. "Did you kill her too?"
"It was a simple case of mistaken identity. She is no longer a concern." The old woman said.
Jake studied Katzer's mother. She clutched the book against her chest with her free hand. She was visibly agitated. Which made her dangerous.
"How many more have to die because of that book?" Jake pointed to the journal.
"As many as it takes." Her voice trailed off. "As many as it takes to protect this family."
"Mother? Scott? What the hell is going on?"
Jake knew that voice. He looked past the old woman.
President Rebecca Rudd stood in the doorway.
R
ebecca Rudd entered
the embalming room. Jake observed the distressed look on her face. Understandable, considering the bombshell just dropped in her lap.
"You heard?" Jake asked.
"I heard enough." She looked at Scott Katzer and then Heidi Katzer. "How could you?"
Neither mother nor brother said a word.
"How did you know?" Wiley asked Rudd.
"I told her," Jake said.
Wiley pointed his finger at Jake. "I'll deal with you later." He turned to Rudd. "Rebecca, you shouldn't be here. I want you to leave. Now."
"No, Elmore." Rudd looked at Wiley. Her voice changed. "This is the one place I should be. And don't blame Jake. After you called me, I called him. I put him on the spot. He couldn't say no to the President. Jake did exactly what you asked him to do."
Rudd stepped toward her mother.
The old woman was visibly shaken, her aging body trembled. It seemed the one thing she didn't want to happen just did. Her daughter, the President of the United States, had discovered the truth.
"Mother, what have you done?"
"Whatever it took to protect you." Heidi Katzer started crying. "I've spent most of my life wondering if this book would ever surface. When you first went into politics, I tried to stop you. But you were so innocent and naïve. You said you had nothing to hide, that you had never done anything wrong. But Rebecca, our closet is full of skeletons."
"What are you saying?" Rudd looked at her brother. "Scott, what have you done? What skeletons is she talking about? I thought that book only contained the locations of Nazi treasures shipped to the United States in caskets of World War II casualties." Rudd walked over to Heidi. She raised her voice and pleaded to her mother. "What else is in that book? Tell me now."
"Don't say a word." Wiley yelled at Rudd's mother.
"This book belonged to your real father."
H
ad
she heard her mother right? Her
real
father. Matthew Katzer was the only father she'd ever known. He had been a loving father and good provider for the family. When she received word he had died in a tragic accident, she was devastated. She rushed home from college to be with her mother. She thought Matthew Katzer was the only man her mother had ever loved.
Until now.
"What do you mean my real father? I remember when Daddy died. I had to console you. You cried for two days. We cried together. I refuse to believe Matthew Katzer was not my real father." Rudd pointed to the leather journal under her mother's arm. "Let me have the book."
"No," Wiley said. "Listen to me, Rebecca. I told you before and I'll reiterate it now. It is in your best interest not to know what's in that book."
"If this book says Matthew Katzer is not my biological father, then as the President, as your daughter, I demand to know who my real father is." Rudd turned to her brother. "Scott, who is our father?"
Scott turned to their mother. "She has a right to know."
Her mother stared at the floor for a few seconds then raised her head. "Your real father is Wolfgang Fleischer."
If Rebecca Rudd had tried to think of the worst possible answer, she never could have matched that name. The name of a man reviled in history books. She felt light headed.
"Wolfgang Fleischer? The Dachau Prison Nazi war criminal?"
Her mother nodded.
Rudd collapsed to the floor.
W
hen President Rebecca Rudd fainted
, Jake rushed toward her only to be forced away by Scott Katzer and the handgun he was holding. Jake's Glock. Katzer motioned for Jake to stand next to Wiley and Francesca.
Katzer walked over to a cabinet, grabbed a bottle from a shelf, and soaked a cotton ball with the liquid from the bottle. He waved it under his sister's nose and she slowly opened her eyes.
While the Katzers attended to Rudd, Jake leaned closer to Wiley. "Who the hell is Wolfgang Fleischer?"
"Ever heard of the holocaust?" Wiley asked.
Jake nodded.
"Fleischer was the commandant of the Dachau political prison and concentration camp during World War II. Under his command, over 15,000 political prisoners were executed, most in the Dachau gas chambers, and then cremated."
"Cremated?" Jake lowered his voice. "Do you see the irony in all this?"
Wiley shook his head.
"Fleischer was in the business of disposing of dead bodies…and so are the Katzers." Jake saw Wiley's lips turn up. "It's the proverbial 'apple doesn't fall far from the tree' thing."
Francesca whispered. "And she found someone to ship all Fleischer's stolen treasure in caskets."
Heidi Katzer raised her gun. "You three. Be quiet."
Scott helped his sister to her feet and walked her to a chair. She sat down and looked at her mother.
"Where was I born?" Rudd asked. "And no more lies."
"In your grandmother's house in Ehrwald, Austria."
"When?"
"March 15, 1944. You and your brother were less than ten minutes apart."
"But our birth certificates say June 6, 1946 in Nashville. How can they be wrong?"
"I was a nurse. I came here in April of 1946 and got a job at Protestant Hospital. Baptist Hospital now. I had easy access to birth certificates. It wasn't that difficult to do. That's where I met Matthew. I put you in school when you were eight years old and claimed you were six."
Rudd hung her head low. Jake could tell the President had full comprehension of the magnitude of what her mother just told her.
"I can't be President," Rudd mumbled. "I was never even eligible in the first place." She looked at her mother and yelled. "Why didn't you stop me? Do you have any idea what you have done?"
Rudd stood. "And for God's sake, put down those guns."
"No," Heidi said. "Not until there are no witnesses." She motioned with her gun. "No loose ends."
"You can not kill them." Rudd said. "Haven't you heard a word Mr. Wiley has said? He is on my side. These people," Rudd pointed to Jake and Francesca, "have been working behind the scenes to keep this from blowing up in our faces. All this time, they've been trying to protect me. It's too late for protection now. I know the truth, as ugly as it is, and there is only one thing left for me to do. Tomorrow I will step down as President of the United States. And I'll do it at the summit meeting."
Rudd stepped in front of her mother. "Now give me the gun."
"No, Rebecca. I can't let you do this."
Rudd grabbed at the gun in her mother's hands.
A single shot rang out.