Fallen Masters (22 page)

“When you get home, read the Bible. You will gain a deep spiritual meaning and insight, even from the smallest and most trivial incidents. You will encounter psychic experiences in your life that cannot be explained simply by science. Do you think it was mere coincidence that you were sitting behind Charlene St. John last night? God has a purpose for you, one that is far greater than you ever have known.”

Again the words, which he now realized had to be in his mind, were spoken with a Swedish accent.

But the voice in his head had raised legitimate questions. He began thinking about what had happened last night, how they had just happened to be sitting behind possibly the best-known singer on the planet. Was it a mere coincidence that he had been sitting behind Charlene St. John? And why were the voices in his head suddenly speaking in Swedish accents when he didn’t even know any Swedes? The one thing that Tyler knew for a fact was that they had saved Ms. St. John’s life. Which was what doctors did, not that Tyler felt very much like a healer at the moment.

“You were great last night, the way you handled that emergency,” Rae said.

“Was I?” Tyler replied. “The funny thing is, Rae, I don’t even know if I will ever be allowed to practice medicine again.”

“Don’t worry about it. God has a purpose for you, one that is far greater than you ever have known.”

Tyler felt as if ice-cold water had splashed down his back and spine. The voice in his head had just used those exact same words. And those were also the very same words Karen’s mom had said to him at the cemetery.

Rae pulled an envelope from her purse. “Remember when I showed this to you last night?”

“Yes, I remember. You said you would tell me when it was time to open it.”

“Now is that time,” Rae said, handing the envelope to him.

Tyler opened the sealed flap. Inside the envelope were business cards for all the houses of worship in the area, from synagogues to mosques, and all the Christian denominations: Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, and Mormon, among others.

Rae watched Tyler as he perused this very eclectic collection of religious institutions. She waited for a full minute before she spoke again, this time in a raised voice.
“Pick one, damnit!”
she said.

“How am I supposed to know which one to pick?”

“Pick one and speak a language. Any language. Or you can do what I do. I go to them all. I treat God like food.”

“You treat God like food? What do you mean?”

“Like food,” Rae repeated. “I can’t just eat Italian all the time. Sometimes I have to have some Chinese, or maybe I need a little Mexican. Some variety.”

Tyler felt tears start to well up in his eyes. In order to break the seriousness and to suppress his emotion, he looked at one of the cards and raised an eyebrow and asked with severe doubt, “I don’t see anything for the Church of Scientology here? What about it? Do you sometimes have to have a little Church of Scientology?”

Rae smiled back to him and quipped, without missing a beat, “Tell me, have you ever seen John Travolta dance? Honey, that white boy has rhythm—more than rhythm. He can park his slippers under my bed anytime!
Whoo hoo,
Mikey—
whoo hoo!
”

Tyler laughed quietly and felt a burden leave him. He was breathing again. Correction, Tyler’s
soul
was breathing.

He wished he could change this moment—rewind the clock to the point when Karen and Jeremy might have been healed. Then they would be with him now and he with them.…

CHAPTER

42

Belfast

American News Channel had made arrangements with its sister broadcast company, Euro News, for Dave Hampton to do his show from its Ireland studios. He could have taped his show for rebroadcast, but he preferred to do it live. Dave was back for a second time, despite his producer’s exasperation last time and the network’s discomfort with the cost. But it was Dave’s show, and until he really screwed things up, he would get his way in most things. He had managed to get the coroner and the police detective who were working the cases.

“How many have there been so far?” Dave asked.

“Eleven,” the policeman, Eric Vaughan, said.

“And I’m told that there are striking similarities in each of the bodies you have found.”

“Aye. The first few were young, attractive women. All were naked.”

“But then the next few victims were men?”

“Aye. And not young either.”

“But you, Dr. O’Reily, in your examinations, despite the gender switches and other factors, you found that there were still similarities.”

“Yes,” the coroner replied. “All had the words ‘Viva Domingo’ carved on their inner thighs.”

“Viva Domingo? As in,
Viva Zapata!
?”

“Perhaps, though I don’t know of anyone named Domingo.”

“Were there other similarities?”

“All had their hearts surgically removed, and all had an archaic or mystical symbol carved on their backs.”

“I believe you have pictures of this?”

“I do.”

“I want to caution our audience, these pictures are rather graphic,” Dave said. “But we have cropped them so that you see only the symbols. And what I call your attention to is the absolute intricacy of these carvings. It is as if whatever demented soul did this thought that he had all the time in the world.”

The pictures were flashed on the screen, one after the other. The glyphs and figures looked almost as if they were tattooed on the skin by a very skilled tattoo artist.

“Are there any cases in recent history like these?” Dave asked.

“No,” the policeman said in a distinctive Irish brogue. “This is—there’s no other way to say it—evil incarnate.”

“Evil incarnate,” Dave said. “Yes, that is precisely what it is.”

Dave looked at the pictures for a moment, then looked back toward the camera.

“Many of you may remember there was a serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. To this day, the killer’s identity remains unknown. The killer himself coined the name Zodiac in a series of letters he sent to the press, all of which contain cryptograms. His victims were four men and three women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-nine.

“The cryptology was broken in only one of his letters, and in it, he said that when he dies to be reborn in the afterlife, that those he killed will be his slaves.

“Are we dealing with a copycat killer here? Or is this the same killer who terrorized California so many years ago?

“Or—” Dave paused in midsentence, then lifted his hand to his head and made a circle. “—here is where people are going to say that old Dave is crazy, but is this something much more than a copycat, or even the original Zodiac killer? Is this a physical manifestation of the sinister shadow I have been speaking about?

“Folks, I’m telling you, don’t dismiss this concept of good versus evil, of the power of darkness doing battle with the power of light. I feel very deeply—and I cannot tell you where this feeling is coming from—that we are soon, all of us, going to be engaged in some cataclysmic battle for survival. And not just survival of our human existence, but the survival of our very souls.”

Dave held his hand up, palm out.

“From Belfast, this is Dave Hampton. Good night, America.”

Grenada

Mama G watched from far away in her island home, smiled, and nodded with appreciation for Dave Hampton doing his job, what needed to be done. She hoped the distraction of these murders would not keep him from his larger task.

The other TV channels and newspapers were finally taking the story seriously and listening to Dave’s perspective, quoting him and sending their own reporters out to cover the breaking news.

She went to her computer to write a new blog to tell the world how she felt. All things in time. As above, so below …

Danton, Missouri

The pressed had dubbed him the “Church Burner.” Carl Turner delighted in the name. He goaded his friend, Brent Begley, into more action with the promise of more headlines. Carl called their nighttime forays into arson their “playdates.”

They met up on Sunday morning at church but said nothing to each other at that time. Their families had belonged to the First Baptist congregation for generations, and they had attended Sunday school together for ten years. Throughout the two-hour service of preaching and prayer, they sat attentively. In the afternoon they ate Sunday supper with their families. Then, at midnight, they met in the First Baptist parking lot and set out on their mission of destruction.

They easily broke the front door lock of the Missionary Community Church in Charlestown and moved swiftly, expertly in the pitch dark. They had reconnoitered the church a few weeks previously, attending a Sunday worship service, coming in a few minutes after it started and leaving early, before it ended—leaving no impression of themselves behind among the congregants.

Now they were all business, lifting benches and chairs to create a pyre around the pulpit. Then they gathered all the hymnals they could find, and collection baskets and paper and picture frames, and piled them, too, and doused the material with a gallon of gasoline.

“Come on,” Turner urged. “Move it.” The only words he had spoken since entering the sanctuary. He tore three paper matches from a convenience store matchbook, struck them, and tossed them into the pyre. He then ignited the remaining matches and dropped them in a puddle of gasoline.

Whoosh!
Smoke and fire blew in every direction. The two young arsonists fled, jumped into the still-running car, and sped off to their next destination—another church about one hour away. It would be their tenth immolation in just six weeks. And they had more work to do—much more.

*   *   *

From the Charlestown, Missouri
Telegraph-Reporter

Two Locals Arrested in Church Arsons; Suspected “Church Burner” to Be Charged

DANTON—Two men were charged Friday morning with setting fire to a church in eastern Missouri. Local and federal authorities said the men may face charges in nine other church fires that have taken place over the past several weeks.

The men, Carl Robert Turner, 20, of Danton, Mo., and Brent Begley, also of Danton, were arrested and charged with arson of a building in the fire, last Sunday, of the Mission Community Church in Charlestown. Officials expected to charge the pair with three burnings here, three in nearby Corinth and one other in Charlestown, as well as two more that fit the same pattern.

Because the building was a church, the charges were elevated to a first-degree felony, said Dan Breslin, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That felony carries a sentence ranging from probation to 99 years to life in prison, Breslin said.

“We’ve been looking at these two guys for a while,” the spokesman said. “But we had to paste together information. By working closely with our local partners, we brought tremendous resources to this investigation, working around the clock for over a month.”

Also deployed in the investigation was a three-year-old black Labrador female with a super snout by the name of Mina. Her human escort was Mike Maloney, a member of the Missouri State arson task force, based in Jefferson City.

“She’s an accelerate detection canine,” Maloney said. Without elaborating on details of the investigation, he said the hound, who has her own badge, played a role in the capture of the suspects, too.

Law enforcement officials at yesterday’s news briefing praised just about everyone, from the church volunteers who guarded their own parishes night and day, to a cooperative news media that would not let the story die, to numerous individuals who provided tips to different agencies.

Bond for the men was set at $10 million apiece. They were being held at the Charles County Jail in Charlestown, pending a court appearance set for next week.

Investigators have said that the fires have followed a loose pattern. Different types of congregations, including Baptist, Methodist, Christian Scientist and nondenominational churches, have been hit. The fires have broken out at different hours, but all occurred at night.

Carl Turner, said to be the “mastermind” of the arson scheme, grew up in his grandparents’ home and attended church regularly until the last year when his attendance became erratic, for the first time in his life.

“This is not his character. He was raised to be a good Christian,” his grandmother, Agnes Turner said. “Our house is full of crosses and pictures of Jesus, our savior,” she added.

Looking back, relatives and acquaintances note several signs that Turner, described by many as a bright student and an avid reader in high school, was rebelling against the strict Christian upbringing by his grandparents.

Begley, the suspected “follower” of his lifelong friend, meanwhile, seemed to have become disenchanted with religion after his mother died of a heart disease on Christmas Day two years ago. He was also unemployed, with no prospects for work.

Begley’s late mother had been extremely devout and had operated the nursery at the First Baptist Church for many years. His father, also deceased, had been a carpenter.

“Brent was always a quiet, shy kid,” a next-door neighbor said. “Carl was more outgoing, more of a personality, always the prankster—and very, very intelligent. I always thought he had a little bit of the devil in him.”

On his Facebook page, Turner said he was a fan of bonfires and listed his religion as “anti-Christian.” He also posted a quote from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that said remorse for wrongdoing was useless: “Never give way to remorse, but immediately say to yourself, that would merely mean adding a second stupidity to the first.”

CHAPTER

43

Melbourne, Australia

Waiting in the green room, Dawson Rask looked down at the cover of his latest book as he sipped a cup of tea. He listened to the banal voice of Jim Mayer, the radio host.
The Chat
was a popular talk show that was carried by stations all over Australia. It was, he was assured, quite a coup to be booked on the show.