The Prophet (31 page)

Marcus waited inside Cliff’s Liquor Store for Andrew to arrive. The place looked like an old grocery store that had gone out of business. Bottles were stacked haphazardly in an open cooler that had obviously been designed for fresh produce. There was metal shelf after metal shelf full of all types of liquors and different-flavored beers of all brands. Stan had instilled in him a taste for Scotch, and he wondered if downing a bottle of Glenlivet would help with the migraine throbbing at the back of his eyes. An older black man with a Jheri curl eyed him from behind the counter. Marcus wasn’t exactly up on the newest trends, but he was fairly certain that the man’s haircut had been out of style for over two decades.

His phone vibrated with a text message saying
Here
a moment before Andrew pulled up in the Yukon. He hopped in, and they headed back down Route 30 toward Indiana. The SUV was warm and welcoming and smelled of new leather. Checking his watch, he estimated that they’d be at Schofield’s office in twenty minutes.

Glancing toward the back seat, he said, “Where’s Maggie?”

Andrew’s gaze didn’t leave the road. “You’re not going to like it.”

“What?”

“She decided to check out Schofield’s house for any sign of the women or a clue to where they may be holding them.”

Andrew was right. Marcus didn’t like it. But Maggie was her own person and a competent agent. If he was going to lead this team, he would need to trust her and give her some operational leeway. In that moment, the realization struck him that he was exactly the kind of leader that he would never be able to work with. He had a real problem with authority and didn’t relish the idea of being a boss. But it wasn’t too late to rectify his mistakes.

He dialed Maggie, and she answered without saying hello. “Marcus, I know what I’m doing, and you’re not talking me out of anything. You’ll just—”

“Whoa, slow down. I wasn’t calling to talk you out of it. I trust your judgment.”

Total silence filled the other end of the line for a long moment, but then she said, “Thank you.”

“Just remember that Schofield may be contained, but Conlan is still out there. Be careful.”

“I will.”

“Maggie, you know that . . .”

“What is it?”

“Just keep me posted,” Marcus said as he ended the call.

The south suburbs whipped by outside the window. The radio was off; the only sound was from the heat pumping out of the Yukon’s vents. Andrew looked at him sideways from the driver’s seat. The surprise on his partner’s face was clear to see but Andrew didn’t say a word.

Maggie pulled her rental car, a light blue Kia Rio, up to the curb in front of the address that Stan had given her. The GPS unit resting on the dark gray dashboard had found Schofield’s home easily, but she still checked the address in the device to be sure. The house wasn’t at all what she had expected. It was a massive and gorgeous red-brick structure. Professionally landscaped plants and shrubbery, still visible beneath a layer of snow, bordered the house. A stamped concrete walkway that matched the home’s brick led up to the front door and then around the side. The sidewalk and the driveway had been recently shoveled.

She parked two houses down and backtracked to Schofield’s front door. It was made of heavy oak and was the color of maple syrup. There was no answer when she knocked, and so she made her way around the side of the house to the back. She discovered a large backyard housing an in-ground pool, a covered patio with a built-in grill, and a balcony leading off what she assumed to be the master bathroom. A large building housing another garage and a workshop or pool house rested along the back half of the property. It was covered with the same intricately patterned brick as the house.

Schofield worked for a security company, and it seemed highly unlikely that he wouldn’t have top-of-the-line protection for his home. Luckily, Maggie had Stan on her side. He had already broken into SSA’s database and extracted the disarm code along with Schofield’s personnel file.

After picking the lock, she entered the house and punched the code into a number pad hanging on the wall a few feet from the entryway. The kitchen was all chrome and granite and dark, ornate wood. Elaborate decorative patterns lined the hardwood floors. The house had a new and clean smell mixed with the aroma of French vanilla.

Maggie called out to make sure that no one was home, and then she walked through the ground floor. All the rooms had been beautifully decorated by someone with elegant and expensive tastes, but the house still had a strange feeling of homeyness. There was no doubt that a family lived there, evidenced by little things like colored pictures hanging on the refrigerator and baseball gloves lying discarded on the granite countertop.

There was a large staircase that curled up to the second story from an inviting foyer, but she decided to check for a basement first. If Schofield was hiding something from his wife, that was where Maggie would find it. She doubted that a man living with a wife and children would be able to hide anything right under their noses, but she also knew that people often saw only what they wanted to see.

She had just left the foyer and was walking down a long hallway whose walls were covered with family photos when the doorbell rang. From instinct, she pressed her body against the wall. Hugging the side of the hall but careful not to knock down the photos, she crept back toward the foyer and peeked around the corner. There was a shadowy figure barely visible through the glazed glass of the front door. She could see little else other than that the man was dressed in dark blue or black.

The doorbell rang out again. It was loud and resonated down the hall from all angles. She waited, refused to move. Then the figure knocked, paused again, and called out. “Mrs. Schofield? It’s an urgent matter about your husband.”

She stood there like a statue and waited for him to leave. The police in Indiana must have asked the local PD to send someone out to collect Schofield’s wife. But they wouldn’t be able to come into the house, even if they suspected that someone was inside. They would need a warrant for that. In one way, this new development hindered Maggie and in another it was a help. It would make leaving the house a challenge, but she figured that she could still sneak out through the back and make her way to her car through the neighbor’s backyard. But this also meant that she had someone out front watching her back. If the Prophet or Schofield’s family showed up, the officer would intervene.

After the cop had gone, Maggie walked back down the hall. At the end, she found a set of carpeted stairs just off the kitchen that led down into the home’s basement.

The headquarters of Schofield Security Associates looked to Marcus more like a hospital than an office building. It had that same large and ambitious glass feel that most new hospital boards seemed to prefer. A shopping plaza surrounded the building and made the police’s job of containment more difficult. They had erected barricades and had uniformed officers holding back the onlookers, but a news crew was already on the scene and a crowd had formed. Local black and white squad cars mixed in with bronze and dark brown cruisers from the Lake County Sheriff’s Department had the building surrounded, and Marcus noticed a large white truck and trailer marked with red and blue stripes and blue letters reading
Mobile Command Center – Indiana District One.
It was quite a set-up. He knew the command center was evidence of the estimated seventy-five billion dollars a year spent by federal and state governments for homeland security in response to the September 11th attacks of 2001.

They parked across the street in front of an IHOP, showed their IDs at the barricade, and walked to the command center. Marcus noticed a man that seemed to be in charge standing in front of another large truck labeled
Lake County Sheriff Tactical Unit.
The man wore a black BDU and a bulletproof vest with SHERIFF printed across the front in white block letters. He had a black mustache, thick eyebrows, and a boxer’s nose with a wide and crooked bridge that looked as if it had been broken and not allowed to heal properly.

Flashing his ID, Marcus said, “It was my office that called you in to apprehend this guy, but judging by the circus here, I’m guessing that it didn’t go down as planned.”

The cop’s eyes narrowed, and his boxer’s nose flared and looked even more crooked.

Andrew immediately stepped in, trying to defuse the situ-ation. “My partner didn’t mean to imply that your men are somehow responsible for the current situation. He was just commenting on the crowd. We have no intentions of trying to assume command here or question your decisions. We’d just like to know what’s happening and what you’re planning.”

The man didn’t seem convinced but said, “Your suspect has barricaded himself in one of the interior offices and has a hostage. He says that if we try to come in, then he’ll kill her. He’s refusing to speak with anyone other than an FBI hostage negotiator.”

Marcus ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “Make no mistake. This guy is a killer, and there’s nothing more dangerous than a cornered predator.”

The cop’s mouth scrunched up, and his eyes narrowed again. “Well aware. We know what we’re doing.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Right now, we’re containing the scene and waiting for the negotiator. But I’ve already requested that the Jackson’s Grove PD send some units to the suspect’s house to see if we can get his wife and kids out here to try and talk him down. Other than that, we’re drawing up contingency plans in case negotiations fail and we’re forced to breach.”

“What about the rest of the building’s employees?”

“He pulled the fire alarm to get everyone out.”

“Are we sure he’s armed? Did anyone see him?”

“No, he barricaded the door and forced his hostage to call 911 and give his instructions. If you don’t mind, I need to get on the phone and find out the status of our negotiator. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

Andrew said, “We appreciate it.”

But Marcus just walked away. This could take hours, and they still didn’t know the location of the abducted women or the Prophet. For all they knew, Conlan could have them and be making preparations to burn them alive at that very moment.

Flipping up his collar against the cold, he found an out-of-the-way spot at the inner edge of the barricades and stared up at the gray rounded end of the office building. He stamped his feet in an attempt to stay warm. It was an old beat cop’s trick, but he had never been convinced that it actually worked.

To Andrew, he said, “Do you think he actually believes that he’s the Antichrist like Crowley told Ackerman?”

“Don’t know, but obviously Conlan believes it.”

“How could anyone believe that they could start the apocalypse by killing a bunch of women?” Marcus’s words came out in puffs of steam in the cold air.

“That’s kind of a silly question.”

“What do you mean?”

“You believe in God. Right, Marcus?”

“Of course, but the God I know would never want something like this.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m saying that you have faith that there is a God even though you can’t prove it.”

Marcus thought of a quote from Paul the Apostle. “The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

“Right. You believe because you feel it in your heart. But imagine if you actually had faith in the fact that by killing a handful of people you would be saving the souls of everyone else in the world. Not saying that it’s right or that I believe a word of it, but faith is a powerful thing. And misguided faith is an extremely
dangerous
thing. Just look at all the terrorist attacks and suicide bombings around the world.”

Marcus said nothing. He just stood there and thought of all the people using God or religion or ideology as a crutch to prop themselves up and achieve their own selfish goals or desires. He had always thought of God as the source of all love in the world. If it involved hatred, then it wasn’t of God. But unlike so many others who sowed the seeds of hate in God’s name, he supposed that at least Conlan had never claimed to be doing God’s work. The Prophet’s master was the author of hatred.

His thoughts turned to Schofield. There was something about this whole situation that bothered him, but he couldn’t quite nail down what it was. If he was being honest with himself, he couldn’t concentrate on much else beyond the pounding in his skull.

“Do we have any Tylenol in the—”

A familiar voice interrupted him from behind. “Marcus, fancy meeting you here.”

He turned to find the Director of the Shepherd Organization walking toward them through the crowd. Their boss wore a gray wool overcoat buttoned to the top and black leather gloves. A gray newsboy cap sat atop his head.

“What are you doing here?”

“Same as you boys, I suspect. Stan told me that you had the Anarchist cornered. I was in town visiting Allen.”

“How is he?”

“Stable. What’s the situation here?”

“He’s in there with a hostage and only wants to speak with a negotiator from the FBI.”

“We could set you up as the negotiator.”

Andrew laughed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, boss.”

Marcus gave Andrew a dirty look but said, “Hate to admit it, but he’s right. I’m not exactly the voice of calm and reason.”

“That may be, but you’re definitely a good investigator. You’ve done good work on this case.”

Marcus just nodded. He had never been good at giving or accepting praise. But there was something that he needed to do that he
was
good at. He needed to get to the bottom of a mystery. “Andrew, could you see if we have any painkillers in the Yukon? I need to speak with the Director about a private matter.”

Andrew mumbled something under his breath as he walked off. Marcus thought that he caught the words
damn
and
errand boy
. Once Andrew was gone, Marcus said, “Why was Francis Ackerman chosen for my recruitment?”

The Director hesitated. Not for long, but long enough to betray a lie. “We’ve been over that. He was just convenient. The timing worked out.”

“So there’s no connection between the two of us?”

“What did he tell you?”

“That you’re a liar.”

“And you believe him rather than me?”

“I’m going to say it one more time. Is there a connection between me and Francis Ackerman?”

“I think we should discuss it once this situation with the Anarchist is—”

“We’ll discuss it
now
.”

“Fine. I’m not sure what he told you, but the truth is that Ackerman and his father murdered your parents.”

Marcus suddenly felt dizzy.

“They played a game with them and would’ve killed you too if you hadn’t heard the screams and hid. That’s the reason why I chose him specifically to be part of your recruitment. If things hadn’t gone wrong back then, you would have learned all this and been able to confront your parents’ killer. That had been my plan, anyway.”

Marcus steadied himself against a nearby police cruiser but couldn’t shake the sensation of falling.

“It doesn’t change anything. You’ll catch him, and justice will be served. I would’ve told you, but I didn’t want it to cloud your judgment.”

Marcus closed his eyes and fought back tears. He should’ve been prepared for this. He had expected as much. But somehow it still felt strange and surreal. For most of his life he had wondered about that night. Tried to remember. Dreamed of finding the people responsible. Dreamed of making them pay. And now he finally had someone that he could line up in his sights.

His fists clenched and unclenched. He cracked his neck to the side, getting into fight mode. Without opening his eyes, he said, “Please leave. If I open my eyes and see you standing there, I’m afraid that I may do something that we’ll both regret.”