R
on Nestor was still simmering.
Even now, a few days after the explosion at the
Mirror
over Jason Wade’s story. Nestor resented how the paper had sacrificed Wade to the political bull. Portraying Wade as the scapegoat made Nestor sick.
For a moment, he’d considered looking into a standing offer to join the
Chicago Tribune.
But he loved Seattle. This was his town. Hell, it was the only town. He took another sip of beer while the crowd roared at a line drive to second that triggered a Mariners’ double play.
He’d come to “the Safe” to see his Ms take on the Toronto Blue Jays. And maybe to sort things out from his seat on the third deck behind first base. It offered views of the skyline, the Needle, and parts of the waterfront while the aroma of garlic fries seasoned the air that cracked with a Mariners’ hit. It soared high over center field, but the wind pushed it back, robbing them of a homer, underscoring Nestor’s bitterness.
Jason Wade had been robbed. His dream of being a reporter was over. He’d be forever identified with the
Mirror
’s disgrace. It tore Nestor up. For the last few days he’d called Wade’s apartment. He couldn’t reach him.
And he’d been calling editors he knew at the
Seattle Times,
the
Post-Intelligencer, the Associated Press,
papers in Tacoma, Olympia, Spokane, out of state, everywhere, trying to find Jason a job.
“Sorry, pal, your boy’s toast. Nobody’s going to hire him,” the editor of a triweekly told Nestor.
It disgusted him because Jason had promise. Yes, he was rough around the edges, wild even, but he was a powerful digger with a natural instinct for news. He broke the Harding story by enterprising on a slow night. He followed it with brilliant work on Cull. Those arrogant big-school interns were smart, polished, and good. But none could touch Jason’s raw talent.
Nestor should’ve done more for him because now he would most likely end up working at the Pacific Peaks Brewery with his father. Likely risk inheriting his old man’s drinking problem too.
What a tragic waste.
Frustrated that several editors had still not returned his calls, Nestor reached for his cell phone, alarmed to learn that he’d forgotten to turn it on. It’d been off all day. He cursed, switched it on, and checked his messages.
Three new ones.
The first was from a friend at the
San Francisco Star.
She apologized but she didn’t have any openings for Jason.
The next message was from a crusty old-timer at the
Denver Post.
“Yeah, Ron, we heard about that crap your kid stirred up. Sorry. No dice here.”
The third message stopped his breathing.
“It’s Jason Wade!—” Static punctuated his words. “I’m outside Garrison! My phone’s dying. Garrison, British Columbia! I’ve found Karen Harding! Alive! I’ve found her! I’m talking with her now! He’s got her locked underground! I think he’s killed people here! Call someone! Get the police to come here fast! It’s on a property at the end of Gallows Ridge, outside Garrison British, Columbia! My phone’s dying! Hurry!”
Nestor’s mind raced. Was it a joke? No, it couldn’t be. Jason must’ve chased the story on his own. He’d do that. Nestor left his seat for a quieter location near a section arch, pulled out his small notebook and replayed the call, wrote it down word for word, then went to a public phone.
The stadium quaked with cheering as he dialed 911, a call to the Seattle police, which set off a chain of events.
I
n Seattle, about a mile from the college where Gideon Cull had instructed Karen Harding in ancient religions, several marked and unmarked police cars converged on a large Colonial-style stone house.
The three-story building with the gables, turret, and pitched roof was owned by Jean Sproule, a sixty-nine-year-old, retired high school principal. She rented her third-floor apartment to Reverend Gideon Cull.
Sproule leaned heavily on her cane, her age-creased face turning serious as she spoke to the FBI agents and the army of police officers who’d arrived at her door displaying their warrant to search Cull’s residence.
“Well, he’s not here,” she told them. “Hasn’t been for days.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“Could you unlock his unit and let us enter, ma’am?”
Sproule’s cat threaded through her legs as she reached for her spare key from the peg, then escorted the police to Cull’s door. She eased herself into a cushioned sofa chair, not feeling right, as the agents wearing white latex gloves snooped through Cull’s belongings. After watching them for nearly an hour Sproule spoke her mind.
“I know this man and what you’re doing is not right. The governor thinks very highly of him.”
The agents said nothing as she continued.
“Whatever you think he’s done, or what the crazy newspeople are accusing him of, is just plain wrong. He’s a man of the cloth, a saint, he helps people. He literally goes out into the night and helps people in trouble.”
The senior agent wearing a tailored charcoal suit stood over Cull’s desk staring at his corkboard, the pinned notes, calendar, snapshots.
A second agent approached him holding a bundle of letters, handwritten letters, bearing no return address. Faces intense, they shuffled through them, reading their chilling contents.
“Ma’am,” the senior agent said, “do you know an individual named Ezra?”
“Who?”
“Ezra.” The agent held out a letter.
Sproule slid on her glasses that hung from the chain around her neck, examined the signature, then shook her head.
At that moment, the senior agent’s cell phone rang.
“Buckner,” he answered.
The senior agent was alerted to a major break coming from a 911 call to a
Seattle Mirror
editor’s cell phone at Safeco Field.
“Ma’am,” the senior said after hanging up, “do you have any idea where Cull is?”
“I told you I do not. He isn’t required to report to me.”
A female agent approached Buckner holding a small, hand-drawn map. He showed it to Sproule. “Excuse me, ma’am, but do you know what this is?” His white-gloved finger tapped on the map.
Sproule adjusted her glasses.
“That’s how you get to Gideon’s place in the mountains.”
“Excuse me?”
“His little hideaway retreat. It’s far away. He told me he goes there to meditate and prepare his studies. I’m not sure, but I’d say that’s probably where he is now.”
All the agents stopped their activity, huddled around the map, exchanging glances while the senior agent began pressing numbers on his cell phone, to add their new information to the investigation.
An arrest warrant and a BOLO had already been issued for Gideon Cull.
He was emerging as one of the FBI’s Most Wanted fugitives.
In minutes, alerts and updates were rocketing to the FBI’s Seattle Field Office, to the FBI’s National Headquarters in Washington, D.C., then to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Headquarters in Ottawa, Canada, and to the RCMP’s “E Division” in command of British Columbia, who then, through Telecoms dispatchers in Kelowna for the division’s southeast district, alerted the Mounties patrolling the remote mountain region around Garrison.
L
isa Roy pulled off the road north of Garrison, British Columbia, to study the alert that had beeped on the mobile computer in her patrol car.
Oh boy.
A multiple 10-35—suspect, possible hostages—on Gallows Ridge originating from a call via the FBI in Seattle. The Emergency Response Team was marshaling to fly out of Kelowna. Air 3, the Bell chopper, was in the Crowsnest Pass. A fixed-wing was lifting off from Golden to do a high and silent aerial. She scrolled through the history. The very first call was now eight minutes old. They were losing light.
The alert advised radio silence.
Typing rapidly, Roy informed her dispatcher of her location. Six or seven minutes from Gallows Ridge. In all, some twenty-two minutes from the property, if she hauled it.
Roy was by herself but by far the closest unit.
Within seconds her computer beeped, advising her to take a traffic point at the location in establishing a perimeter out of sight of the property, out of the line of fire, and await backup.
Ten-four.
Stones and dirt blasted from her marked Crown Victoria, creating a rising curtain of dust as she roared from the shoulder down the road.
Roy was a twenty-six-year-old Royal Canadian Police Constable from Montreal. She was five feet eight inches tall, one hundred twenty-five pounds, and a black belt. She’d graduated top in her troop at the RCMP academy in Regina, Saskatchewan, ten months ago, hoping to one day join Vancouver’s Major Crimes Section.
For now, Roy’s first posting was here at Garrison where she was assigned to traffic and general detachment duties. She’d assisted on executing warrants on fugitive bikers and helped drug enforcement take down some major hydroponic grow operations. Now this Seattle case. It was a big one. Roy had seen the recent news reports on the Spokane and Seattle stations that broadcast into B.C., never thinking it would reach into her own backyard.
The Crown Vic’s engine growled as Roy ate up the road, winding her way closer to that creepy zone with the dead end. The region’s lore said the area was the site of some turn-of-the-century pagan cult activity that had attracted worshippers over the decades. If it was true, it was never documented. Some of the locals were a little odd, but there was never any trouble here.
Until now.
Checking her odometer, Roy cut her speed. She was very near and slowed to a crawl. The gated entrance was around the bend, about fifty yards away. This was a good place to stop.
She T-boned her car, popped the trunk, and set to work. She was wearing navy pants with a wide yellow seam stripe, a khaki shirt with shoulder patches bearing the letters
RCMP GRC.
Over her shirt Roy had a blue Kevlar vest. A 9mm Smith & Wesson was holstered in her leather utility belt.
She took her roll of yellow plastic tape and stretched a line across the road, tying it off on cedar trees. She updated her status to her dispatcher.
Roy then loaded her shotgun, found her binoculars, and walked to the bend to surveil the gate. Catching a glint of chrome in the setting sun, she went down the side of the road, using the dense bush for cover until she came upon a car half-hidden in the woods. It had a Washington plate. She took it down and examined the car for any signs of a struggle or violence.
Nothing obvious.
She returned to her car and was transmitting her update with plate information when she froze and listened. Did she hear something? It had ascended from somewhere within the dense forests, riding along the early evening breezes that lifted a few strands of Roy’s hair.
A faint cry.
She updated her report, requesting the ETA of the nearest backup.
Her computer beeped. The nearest RCMP members out of Garrison were twenty-five minutes from her.
Roy bit her bottom lip. Decision time. If a life was at risk and she was too late, she’d never forgive herself. She was going in. It was a judgment call but she was going in now.
Alone.
She updated her dispatcher, tested her portable radio, inserted her earpiece, grabbed her shotgun and extra shells before trotting down the side of the road, using the trees as cover.
Roy hopped the gate, then moved along the dirt road that cut into the property. The sun was plummeting behind the mountains, cooling the air, playing tricks with light and shadow as bird calls echoed from the woods.
She came upon the house, peeked through windows. No sounds or signs of movement. At one side she found the RV. Then, half-concealed in the bush nearby, she noticed another car with Washington plates.
She examined it, took down the plate.
Light winds hissed through the trees, beckoning Roy to choose one of the paths twisting from the main house area. She chose the nearest, feeling a sense of dread as she moved through the dark woods with its surreal light play. And the silence.
Something was wrong. She could sense it in the air.
She tightened her grip on her shotgun and swallowed. Her blood pumped in her ears against the earpiece of her radio. As she came to the top of a rise her heart stopped. She swung her gun down to a man lying on his stomach.
She scanned the area for a weapon and saw none.
Adrenaline jetted to every corner of her body, her nostrils flared with her hard breathing. Shafts of dying light stabbed the treetops, her eyes adjusted, then it hit her.
The man’s head was gone.
K
aren Harding was upright, spread-eagled, and trembling under the ropes binding her to the twelve-foot cedar beams that formed an X.
All of her hair had been shorn, she had been stripped of all her clothing and dressed in a long nightshirt saturated with sulfur. The reverend turned to her from the fire and began the ritual by pronouncing her sentence.
“The court has found you guilty of communion with devils and condemns you to renounce your allegiance.” He stepped forward, drawing his hooded head to within inches of her face. “Do you wish to confess?”
The fire hissed. Karen’s soft sobbing joined the rush of the blaze and the shrieks of night creatures.
“Please.” Her voice barely reached above a whisper. “I don’t know what I’ve done wrong but I’m sorry. Please let me go. Please.”
He did not move. A long moment passed before he spoke.
“Reconcile your soul, witch.”
He turned back to his work at the heavy wooden table—his altar. It displayed an array of branding irons, knives, pliers, scissors, hooks, surgical saws, and a Venetian Pear that had survived several centuries, like the malice burning in his eyes as he proceeded to the next act.
He blessed his instruments to thwart any sorcery that might render the prisoner’s sentence painless. After praying over each item, he pulled on his long leather gloves studded with silver rivets. They sparkled when he went to the fire to withdraw the steel rod he had been heating in the flames.
The small X on its tip glowed red as he turned to Karen, holding it in front of her eyes as he moved the glowing iron closer.
She felt its awful heat.
Please. Somebody help me.
Turning her head in terror, she glimpsed the other tall Xs’ standing far off like specters in the distant darkness.
Hanging from them were the rotting remains of corpses.