The Beginning (34 page)

Sally St. John Brainerd and James Railey Quinlan were married on the date Dillon Savich had set for them—October 14. Dillon Savich was Quinlan's best man and Sally's mother was her matron of honor. She attended her daughter's wedding with Senator Matt Montgomery from Iowa, a widower who'd taken one look at Noelle and fallen hard. She had worn a two-piece bathing suit that summer.

There were one hundred and fifty special agents from the FBI, including two special agents from the Portland field office, one of them the newly appointed SAC, or special agent in charge. Every Railey and Quinlan within striking distance arrived at the Elm Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Sally was simply enfolded into her new family.

Ms. Lilly, Marvin the Bouncer, and Fuzz the Bartender were in attendance, Ms. Lilly wearing white satin and Marvin announcing to everyone that the chicky looked gorgeous in her wedding dress. Fuzz brought a bottle of Chardonnay for a wedding present. It had a cork.

The media mobbed the wedding, which was expected since the trial of Dr. Beadermeyer—aka Norman Lipsy—had ended the previous week and Sally had been one of the major prosecution witnesses. He'd been found guilty of conspiracy, murder, kidnapping, extortion, and income tax evasion, which, a TV news anchorwoman said, was the most serious of all the charges and would keep him in jail until the twenty-second century.

Scott Brainerd had plea-bargained to a charge of kidnapping and conspiracy, which the government finally agreed to, since the feds could find no solid proof of his activity in arms dealing. He was sentenced to ten years in jail. But Sally knew, she told Quinlan, that Scott would have the best behavior in the entire prison system. She'd bet the little worm would be out in three years, curse him. Quinlan rubbed his hands together and said he couldn't wait.

In the previous June, Sally had become the senior aide to Senator Bob McCain. She had begun showing Quinlan a glitzy Washington, D.C., that was sleazy in a very different way from what he was used to. He said he wasn't certain which Washington was more fascinating. Sally was running every day, usually with James, and in July she began to sing in the shower again.

Amabel Perdy, it had been agreed to in late July, was going to be treated differently from the other fifty members of The Cove. Besides committing eight murders—four by stabbing—she'd also shot a special agent, kidnapped her niece, and aided and abetted the escape of a murder suspect, thus becoming an accessory. Her trial would be held at the end of the year. Neither Quinlan nor Sally was looking forward to it.

All the murders were detailed in Thelma Nettro's diaries—how they had been done, when, and by whom. Thelma Nettro wrote that there was little or no remorse among the townspeople after the twentieth victim had been dispatched. Poison was the favored method, she wrote, because Ralph Keaton didn't like mess when he laid the people out for burial.

She herself had murdered two people, an old couple from Arkansas, she wrote, who'd died quickly, smiling, because they'd eaten slices of Martha's New Jersey cheesecake and hadn't tasted the poison.

It came out that the last two murders of old people who'd had the misfortune to want to try the World's Greatest Ice Cream had occurred two months before Sally Quinlan had arrived for the first time in The Cove to hide at her aunt Amabel's cottage. Reverend Hal Vorhees had drawn the highest number. He'd persuaded an affluent old couple to remain for a special evening spiritual revival service that had been organized that very afternoon.

Thelma had written in her diary that it had been a very pleasant service, with many people rising to give thanks to God for what He'd done for them. There were punch and cookies after the service. Revered Hal hadn't put enough arsenic in the cookies, and the old couple had had to be poisoned again, which distressed everyone, particularly Doc Spiver.

Three books were being written on The Cove, all with a different slant, the biggest best-seller presenting Reverend Hal Vorhees as a crazed messiah who had murdered children in Arizona, then come to The Cove and converted all the townspeople to a form of Satanism.

Since it was obvious that the murders would have continued until either all the townspeople died off or were caught, as was the case, the Justice Department and the lawyers agreed that the old people would be separated, each one sent to a different mental institution in a different state. The attorney general said simply in an interview after the formal sentencing, “We can't trust any two of them together. Look what happened before.”

The ACLU objected, but not very strenuously, contending that the ingredients in the World's Greatest Ice Cream (the recipe remained a secret) had induced an irresponsible hysteria in the old people that led them to lose their sense of moral value and judgment. Thus they shouldn't be held answerable for their deeds. When the ACLU lawyer was asked if she would go to The Cove to buy ice cream, she allowed that she would only if she was wearing tattered blue jeans and driving a very old Volkswagen Beetle. Perhaps, one newspaper editorial said, it was a collective sugar high that drove them all to do it.

Thelma Nettro died peacefully in her sleep before the final disposition of her friends. Martha hanged herself in her cell when she was told by a matron in mid-July that young Ed had died of prostate cancer.

As for The Cove and the World's Greatest Ice Cream, both ceased to exist. The sign at the junction of highways 101 and 101A fell down some two years later and lay there until a memorabilia buff hauled it away to treasure it in his basement.

Hikers still visit The Cove now and again. Not much there now, but the view from the cliffs at sunset—with or without a martini—is spectacular.

Whenever I hear writers brag about how their editors don't require any changes to their manuscripts, I'm honestly floored. It's an editor's job to be the reader's representative and thus make the manuscript better. And believe me, a manuscript can always be made better.

I've got to be the luckiest writer ever. I don't have just one editor, I have a three-person hack-and-maim team, and all three of them give me very timely feedback, all with an eye to making my novels the best they can be. My ongoing thanks to Stacy Creamer, Leslie Gelbman, and Phyllis Grann.

I'd also like to thank my husband, Anton, for getting back into the editing saddle after a ten-year hiatus. He's the Editor from Hell (in the good sense).

And finally, my continuing thanks to Karen Evans with the red Babylonian harlot hair. Without her incredible mental energy, enthusiasm, and support, I would soon find myself in a sorry state.

Life is good.

San Francisco, California
May 15

It wouldn't stop, ever.

She couldn't breathe. She was dying. She sat upright in her bed wheezing, trying to control the terror. She turned on the lamp beside her bed. There was nothing there. No, there were shadows that kept the corners dark and frightening. But the door was closed. She always closed her bedroom door at night and locked it, then tilted a chair against it so that its back was snug against the doorknob, for good measure.

She stared at that door. It didn't move. It didn't so much as rattle in its frame. The knob did not turn. No one was on the other side trying to get in.

No one this time.

She made herself look over toward the window. She'd wanted to put bars on all the windows when she moved in seven months before, but at the last minute she decided that if she did she would have made herself a prisoner forever. Instead she'd switched to the fourth-floor apartment. There were two floors above her and no balconies. No one could come in through the window. And no one would think she was crazy because she lived on the fourth floor. It was a good move. There was no way she could continue living at home, where Belinda had lived. Where Douglas had lived.

The images were in her mind, always faded, always blurred, but still there and still menacing: bloody, but just beyond her ability to put them in focus. She was in a large dark space, huge; she couldn't see the beginning or the end of it. But there was a light, a narrow focused light, and she heard a voice. And the screams. Loud, right there on her. And there was Belinda, always Belinda.

She was still choking on the fear. She didn't want to get up, but she made herself. She had to go to the bathroom. Thank God the bathroom was off the bedroom. Thank God she didn't have to unlock the bedroom door, pull the chair back from beneath the knob, and open it onto the dark hallway.

She flipped the bathroom light on before she went into the room, then blinked rapidly at the harsh light. She saw movement from the corner of her eye. Her throat clogged with terror. She whirled around: It was only herself in the mirror.

She stared at her reflection. She didn't recognize the wild woman before her. All she saw was fear: the twitching eyes, the sheen of sweat on her forehead, her hair ratty, her sleep shirt damp with perspiration.

She leaned close to the mirror. She stared at the pathetic woman whose face was still tense with fear. She realized in that moment that if she didn't make some serious changes the woman in the mirror would die.

To the woman staring back at her, she said, “Seven months ago I was supposed to go study music at Juilliard. I was the best. I loved making music, all the way from Mozart to John Lennon. I wanted to win the Fletcher competition. But I didn't. Now I'm afraid of everything, including the dark.”

She turned slowly away from the mirror and walked back into her bedroom. She walked to the window, turned the three locks that held it firmly in place, and pulled it up. It was difficult. The window hadn't been opened since she'd moved in.

She looked out into the night. There was a quarter moon. There were stars flooding the sky. The air was cool and fresh. She could see Alcatraz, Angel Island beyond it. She could see the few lights in Sausalito, across the bay. The TransAmerica Building was brightly lit, a beacon in downtown San Francisco.

She turned away and walked to the bedroom door. She stood there a very long time. Finally she pulled the chair away and set it where it belonged, in the corner beside a reading light. She unlocked the door. No more, she thought, staring at that door, no more.

She flung it open. She stepped out into the hallway and stopped, every burgeoning whisper of courage in her freezing as she couldn't help but hear the sound of a creaking board not more than twenty feet away. The sound came again. No, it wasn't a creak; it was a lighter sound. It seemed to be coming from the small foyer by the front door. Who could be toying with her this way? Her own breath whooshed out. She was shaking, so frightened she could taste copper in her mouth. Copper? She'd bitten her lip, drawn blood.

How much longer could she live like this?

She dashed forward, turning on every light as she went. There was the sound again, this time like something lightly bumping against a piece of furniture—something that was a lot smaller than she was, something that was afraid of her. Then she saw it scurry into the kitchen. She burst out laughing, then slowly sank to the floor, her hands over her face as she sobbed.

Seven Years Later
FBI Academy
Quantico, Virginia

She would get to the top of that rope if it killed her. And it just might. She could actually feel each individual muscle in her arms pulling, stretching, feel the burning pain, the rippling cramps that were very close to knotting up on her. If that happened, she'd go sprawling to the mat below. Her brain already felt numb, but that was okay. Her brain wasn't climbing. It had just gotten her into this fix. And this was only the second round. It seemed as if she'd been climbing this rope since she was born.

Just two more feet. She could do it. She heard MacDougal's steady, unhurried breathing beside her. From the corner of her eye she saw his huge fists cover that rope, methodically clamping down one fist over the other, not consuming that rope as he usually did. No, he was keeping pace with her. He wasn't going to leave her. She owed him. This was an important test. This one really mattered.

“I see that pathetic look, Sherlock. You're whining even though you're not saying anything. Get those twerpy arms working. Pull!”

She grabbed that rope three inches above her left hand and pulled with all her strength.

“Come on, Sherlock,” Mac said, hanging beside her, grinning at her, the bastard. “Don't wimp out on me now. I've worked with you for two months. You're up to twelve-pound weights. All right, so you can only do ten reps on your biceps, but you can do twenty-five on your triceps. Come on now, do it. Don't just hang there like a girl.”

Whine? She didn't have enough breath to whine. He was goading her, doing a good job of it actually. She tried to get annoyed. There wasn't a pissed bone in her body, only pain, deep and burning. Eight more inches, no, more like nine inches. It would take her two years to get those nine inches. She saw her right hand pull free of the rope, grab the bar at the very top of the knotted rope that was surely too far for her to make in one haul, but her right hand closed over that bar and she knew she'd either do it or she wouldn't.

“You can do it, Sherlock. Remember last week in Hogan's Alley when that guy pissed you off? Tried to handcuff you and haul you off as a hostage? You nearly killed him. You wound up having to apologize to him. That took more strength than this. Think mean. Think dead-meat thoughts. Kill the rope. Pull!”

She didn't think of the guy in Hogan's Alley; no, she thought of that monster, focused on a face she'd never seen, focused on the soul-deep misery he'd heaped upon her for seven years. She wasn't even aware when she hauled herself up those final inches.

She hung there, breathing hard, clearing her mind of that horrible time. Mac was laughing beside her, not even out of breath. But he was all brute strength she'd told him many times; he'd been born in a gym, under a pile of free weights.

She'd done it.

Mr. Petterson, their instructor, was standing below them. He was at least two stories below them; she would have sworn to that. He yelled up, “Good going, you two. Come on down now. MacDougal, you could have made it a little faster, like half the time you took. You think you're on vacation?”

Mac shouted down to Petterson since she didn't have a breath in her lungs, “We're coming, sir!” He said to her, grinning so wide she could see the gold filling in a molar, “You did good, Sherlock. You have gotten stronger. Thinking mean thoughts helped, too. Let's get down and let two other mean dudes climb this sucker.”

She needed no encouragement. She loved going down. The pain disappeared when her body knew it was almost over. She was down nearly as fast as Mac. Mr. Petterson waved a pencil at them, then scribbled something on his pad. He looked up and nodded. “That was it, Sherlock. You made it within the time limit. As for you, Mac, you were way too slow, but the sheet says you pass so you pass. Next!”

“Piece of cake,” Mac said, as he handed her a towel to wipe off her face. “Look at all that sweat on you.”

If she'd had the energy, she would have slugged him.

 

SHE
was in Hogan's Alley, the highest-crime-rate city in the United States. She knew just about every inch of every building in this town, certainly better than the actors who were paid eight dollars an hour to play bad guys, better than many of the bureau employees who were witnesses and robbers alike. Hogan's Alley looked like a real town; it even had a mayor and a postmistress, but they didn't live here. Nobody really lived here or really worked here. It was the FBI's own American town, rife with criminals to be caught, situations to be resolved, preferably without killing anyone. Instructors didn't like innocent bystanders to be shot.

Today she and three other trainees were going to catch a bank robber. She hoped. They were told to keep their eyes open, nothing else. It was a parade day in Hogan's Alley. A festive occasion, and that made it all the more dangerous. There was a crowd of people, drinking sodas and eating hot dogs. It wasn't going to be easy. Chances were that the guy was going to be one of the people trying to blend in with the crowd, trying to look as innocent as an everyday guy; she'd stake a claim on that. She would have given anything if they'd gotten a brief glance at the robber, but they hadn't. It was a critical situation, lots of innocent civilians milling about and a bank robber who would probably run out of the bank, a bank robber who was probably very dangerous.

She saw Buzz Alport, an all-night waiter at a truck stop off I-95. He was whistling, looking as if he didn't have a care in the world. No, Buzz wasn't the bad guy today. She knew him too well. His face flushed scarlet when he played the bad guy. She tried to memorize every face, so she'd be able to spot the robber if he suddenly appeared. She slowly worked the crowd, calm and unhurried, the way she'd been trained.

She saw some visitors from the Hill, standing on the sidelines, watching the agents' role-playing simulations. The trainees would have to be careful. It wouldn't look good for the Bureau if any of them killed a visiting congressman.

It began. She and Porter Forge, a southerner from Birmingham who spoke beautiful French without a hint of a drawl, saw a bank employee lurch out of the front doors, yelling at the top of his lungs, waving frantically at a man who had just fled through a side door. They got no more than a brief glimpse. They went after him. The perp dove into the crowd of people and disappeared. Because there were civilians around, they kept their guns holstered. If any one of them hurt a civilian, there'd be hell to pay.

Three minutes later they'd lost him.

It was then she saw Dillon Savich, an FBI agent and computer genius who taught occasional classes here at Quantico, standing next to a man she'd never seen before. Both were wearing sunglasses and blue suits and blue-gray ties.

She'd know Savich anywhere. She wondered what he was doing here at this particular time. Had he just taught a class? She'd never heard about his being at Hogan's Alley. She stared hard at him. Was it possible that he was the suspect the bank employee had been waving at as he'd dashed into the crowd? Maybe. She tried to place him in that brief instant of memory. It was possible. Only thing was that he didn't look at all out of breath, and the bank robber had run out of the bank like a bat out of hell. Savich looked cool and disinterested.

Nah, it couldn't be Savich. Savich wouldn't join in the exercise, would he? Suddenly, she saw a man some distance away from her slowly slip his hand into his jacket. He was going for a gun. She yelled to Porter.

While the other trainees were distracted, Savich moved away from the man he'd been talking to and ducked behind three civilians. Three other civilians who were close to the other guy were yelling and shoving, trying to get out of the way.

What was going on here?

“Sherlock! Where'd he go?”

She began to smile even as other agents were pushing and shoving, trying desperately to sort out who was who. She never lost sight of Savich. She slipped into the crowd. It took her under a minute to come around him from behind.

There was a woman next to him. It was very possibly about to become a hostage situation. She saw Savich slowly reach out his hand toward the woman. She couldn't take the chance. She drew her gun, came right up behind him, and whispered in his ear as she pressed the nose of the 9mm SIG pistol into the small of his back, “Freeze. FBI.”

“Ms. Sherlock, I presume?”

She felt a moment of uncertainty, then quashed it. She had the robber. He was just trying to rattle her. “Listen to me, buddy, that's not part of the script. You're not supposed to know me. Now, get your hands behind your back or you're going to be in big trouble.”

“I don't think so,” he said, and began to turn.

The woman next to them saw the gun, screamed, and yelled, “Oh my God, the robber's a woman! Here she is! She's going to kill a man. She's got a gun! Help!”

“Get your hands behind your back!” But how was she going to get cuffs on him? The woman was still yelling. Other people were looking now, not knowing what to do. She didn't have much time.

“Do it or I'll shoot you.”

He moved so quickly she didn't have a chance. He knocked the pistol out of her hand with a chop of his right hand, numbing her entire arm, bulled his head into her stomach and sent her flying backward, wheezing for breath, landing in a mass of petunias in the flower bed beside the Hogan's Alley Post Office.

He was laughing. The bastard was laughing at her. She sucked in air as hard and fast as she could. Her stomach was on fire. He stuck out his hand to pull her up.

“You're under arrest,” she said and slipped a small Lady Colt .38 from her ankle holster. She gave him a big grin. “Don't move or I guarantee you'll regret it. Since I climbed that rope, I know I'm capable of just about anything.”

His laughter died. He looked at the gun, then at her, up on her elbows in the petunia bed. There were a half dozen men and women standing there watching, holding their breath. She yelled out, “Stay back, all of you. This man's dangerous. He just robbed the bank. I didn't do it, he did. I'm FBI. Stay back!”

“That Colt isn't Bureau issue.”

“Shut up. You so much as twitch and I'll shoot you.”

He made a very small movement toward her, but she wasn't going to let him get her this time. He was into martial arts, was he? She knew she was smashing the petunias, but she didn't see any way around it. Mrs. Shaw would come after her because the flower beds were her pride and joy, but she was only doing her job. She couldn't let him get the better of her again.

She kept inching away from him, that Colt steady on his chest. She came up slowly, keeping her distance. “Turn around and put your hands behind you.”

“I don't think so,” he said again. She didn't even see his leg, but she did hear the rip of his pants. The Colt went flying onto the sidewalk.

She was caught off guard. Surely an escaping crook would turn tail and run, not stand there looking at her. He wasn't behaving the way he should. “How'd you do that?”

Where were her partners?

Where was Mrs. Shaw, the postmistress? She'd once caught the designated bank robber by threatening him with a frying pan.

Then he was on her. This time, she moved as quickly as he did. She knew he wouldn't hurt her, just disable her, jerk her onto her face and humiliate her in front of everyone, which would be infinitely worse than being actually hurt. She rolled to the side, came up, saw Porter Forge from the corner of her eye, caught the SIG from him, turned and fired. She got him in midleap.

The red paint spread all over the front of his white shirt, his conservative tie, and his dark blue suit.

He flailed about, managing to keep his balance. He straightened, stared down at her, stared down at his shirt, grunted, and fell onto his back into the flower bed, his arms flung out.

“Sherlock, you idiot, you shot the new coach of Hogan's Alley High School's football team!” It was the mayor of Hogan's Alley and he wasn't happy. He stood over her, yelling. “Didn't you read the paper? Didn't you see his picture? You live here and you don't know what's going on? Coach Savich was hired last week. You just killed an innocent man.”

“She also made me rip my pants,” Savich said, coming up in a graceful motion. He shook himself, wiping dirt off his hands onto his filthy pants.

“He tried to kill me,” she said, rising slowly, still pointing the SIG at him. “Also, he shouldn't be talking. He should be acting dead.”

“She's right.” Savich sprawled onto his back again, his arms flung out, his eyes closed.

“He was only defending himself,” said the woman who'd yelled her head off. “He's the new coach and you killed him.”

She knew she wasn't wrong.

“I don't know about that,” Porter Forge said, that drawl of his so slow she could have said the same thing at least three times before he'd gotten it out. “Suh,” he continued to the mayor who was standing at his elbow, “I believe I saw a wanted poster on this big fella. He's gone and robbed banks all over the South. Yep, that's where I saw his picture, on one of the Atlanta PD posters, suh. Sherlock here did well. She brought down a really bad guy.”