Wisdom Spring (29 page)

I punched in the code and opened the door. I flicked the light switch and we just stopped and stared. The room was small, maybe 15x20, with tables lining the walls. Stacked on the tables were about a dozen large storage boxes. An industrial-size dehumidifier with a hose leading to a drain hole in the rock chugged along under one of the tables, and a lone, nearly empty smaller table sat in the middle of the room, a can of pens and markers on one corner. A cheap desk chair was pushed under the table. Once again, my disappointment at the cheesiness of it all was palpable.

Each of the stacked boxes was labeled with a series of letters and numbers—meaningless to us. I opened one and found it full of manila folders, each one with a name of a person or a company.

“How do we want to do this?” I asked.

“We just have to go through them, I guess.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” I said. “Suppose I take one side of the room and you take the other. We open each box and pull out a folder if we recognize the name or it looks interesting. It would be a start at least.”

Jess began on the right side of the room, and I started on the left. The boxes were stacked three high. I put the top two of the first stack on the floor and started on the bottom box on the table.

The files were neat, which helped a lot. There were no bulging folders; all of them were thin. In fact, some of them were so thin I had to pull one out to see why. The name on the folder was “Alice Palmer,” a name that meant nothing to me. I opened it to find a single page of ledger paper with a picture attached and just a few entries. The picture was of a cute little girl with blonde curls. The entry read:

Alice Palmer

Entered Wisdom Spring 10-4-71, approx. age: 7

Obtained from Ukraine National Orphanage

Deceased 11-6-72

That was it. I put it back in and continued my search. I pulled out a second similarly thin folder. This one had a picture of a younger child.

Jeffrey Lamp

Entered Wisdom Spring 6-5-72, approx. age: 5

Obtained from Ukraine National Orphanage

Returned to orphanage 12-14-72

I looked at a few more. Two more were deceased and three more were returned to the orphanage. I pulled out my phone—my own smartphone, not one of the cheap ones—and took pictures of some of the pages.

The second box was similar to the first, but had a few folders that were thicker. All this time we were quietly going about our business. I saw Jess occasionally open a folder, then close it again and put it back in the box. We were working quickly, knowing time wasn’t on our side. I looked at one of the thicker ones. There was a name I recognized—a foreign name—but I couldn’t place it. I pulled out the folder and put it aside.

“Any folder that is somewhat thick, we should put aside,” I said, my voice disturbing the eerie silence of the room.

“There are a lot of kids listed here,” said Jess. “Some are dead. A lot of them weren’t here more than a year.”

“I’ve taken a picture of some of them,” I answered. “Open a few more and see if you can see a pattern.”

I was beginning to panic, time-wise, though, and found myself going through the boxes even faster. I was starting to recognize some names. Some were politicians from the ‘80s and ‘90s, recognizable names, but otherwise fairly obscure.

“It’s obvious that we’re going to have to take some of this with us. I suggest some boxes of the thicker folders, then a box of the thin ones. The thin ones might tell a whole different aspect of this story. Whatever this story is,” I added. “Just pick those at random, I guess.”

“We could take them all,” suggested Jess.

“I think we should leave some,” I answered. “If they send someone to check on it, maybe they won’t know how many boxes are supposed to be here and won’t notice any missing. If we take them all, it’ll be obvious we were here.”

Jess agreed and we got back to work. She found our smoking gun a few minutes later.

“Ben Fremont!” she exclaimed. I was there in a second.

We knew we couldn’t take the time to go through it carefully, so we quickly turned the pages while I snapped a picture of each one. Some of it was information we already knew, and some of it was going to require much more attention. The first page, though, told us some things we didn’t know.

Ben Fremont

Entered Wisdom Spring 12-2-69, age 7

Obtained from Nevada Camp for Boys

Original name: Nicholas Spencer, changed 2-12-70

Graduated 12-2-83

Name changed to Gary Hillstrom, 1987

“We were right,” said Jess. “He was twenty-one when he left.”

“Let’s put it in our keeper box and try to get through the rest of these,” I suggested. As much as we wanted to study Ben’s file, the very information we came for, there was just too much to absorb. It was also important to finish going through the other folders. I was starting to see more names I recognized. Some of them were politicians still in office, including a current Congressman from Arizona—Hillstrom’s running mate. I started sweating. I came across another name I knew, and I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Is Mario Pecorelli one of our Supreme Court justices?” I asked.

“Beats me,” Jess answered. “I might be able to tell you two or three of them, but not all eight.”

“Nine.”

“See?”

I was pretty sure he was, so I went through the folder at a rapid pace. Yes, appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. He wasn’t a former resident of Wisdom Spring, but I got the impression that he was part of the conspiracy, whether he had been bought or threatened. I’d have to read closer for that. There was a ledger sheet full of numbers. I had a feeling they were maybe offshore bank accounts and payments, but we’d have to look more closely later.

We finished in about two and a half hours, much longer than I had hoped. We had come upon a who’s who of world politicians and business leaders. At quick glance, a few of them had graduated from Wisdom Spring like Ben Fremont, while with most of the others, it was unclear as to the connection. We ended up with six boxes, five crammed with the larger folders and one with the very thin ones.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said, and Jess agreed. We carried the boxes out and I took a picture of the room before we turned out the light and closed the door.

We made it to the main door when Jess said, “No, not yet.”

“What?”

“There’s something else we need to see, and it’s important.”

I had learned not to question her, so I just said, “Okay, lead me. But,” I said, looking at my watch, “we need to go quickly.”

“It’s down this ramp,” she said, pointing to the road. She led the way and we started our descent. It was easy walking. At about the two hundred foot point, the road switched back the other way. We did two more switches before Jess stopped at a door. It was just set in the rock wall. There was no lock or keypad. The road continued on, but Jess made it clear that this was our destination.

“Any hint as to what’s behind this door?” I asked.

“Not really. I just know that it’s not good.” I put my hand on my gun in my belt. “You won’t need that,” she said, and opened the door.

We were immediately hit with a strange smell—sort of musty and sort of sour. I found the light switch and illuminated the room.

As if on cue, we both bent over and heaved up the contents of our stomach.

We had stepped into a chamber about the size of a small warehouse, and in front of us were dozens of dead bodies in various stages of mummification.

Many of them were young children.

Chapter 35

After leaving Jon and Jess in the town, Scott and Joe headed up the hill in one of the Jeeps, two warriors in search of a battle. Even Max seemed keyed up. He knew something big was going down. They drove in silence, each man deep in his own thoughts, until they reached a point approximately two miles from the highway. Scott found a small clearing on the right and backed the Jeep in as far as it would go, partially concealing it under a tree. The woods were dark and the Jeep was black, so they were pretty sure it wouldn’t be seen. They started up the road.

“I guess our first job will be to take out the remaining guard, if he’s up there,” said Joe. “Then we watch and wait for reinforcements. We can figure out what to do next based on the number of people they send.”

“If I had to guess,” replied Scott, “the reinforcements will probably come in two waves, those close, then those from the lower forty-eight.”

“I suppose it’s even possible that they don’t have anyone close,” said Joe.

“Possible. But nothing so far has been that easy.”

At about the one quarter mile mark, Joe headed off into the woods on the right and Scott and Max took the left.

As Scott made his way through the trees, he reflected on the change in Jon. Jon had always been sort of straight-laced, unwilling to stretch laws or get wild, while Scott was the exact opposite, known to local cops as a kid on the fringe—not a bad kid, but one capable of getting into trouble and definitely worth watching.

Scott was ecstatic when Jon got into sales, figuring it would loosen him up a bit and help him gain confidence. The confidence part came out loud and clear, which helped him work his way up the ladder to the kick-ass highly paid job he ended up with. He even loosened up when it came to business, learning how to cut the right corners. His personal life, though, was a different story. If anything, he became more rigid. Marrying Victoria was a major mistake. Scott knew it from the beginning, and he suspected others did too.

Then Victoria got pregnant. She was obviously happy about it. Jon, on the other hand, was probably beginning to sense his dissatisfaction with his marriage, and a child meant that he was stuck in it for the next fifteen to twenty years at least. But when Karen was born, he embraced her with all of his heart—that much was obvious to Scott. In some ways, she became a surrogate for Victoria. The more attention he gave Karen, the less he had to interact with Victoria.

But this was a new Jon. Forceful, creative, and much looser. He knew that Jess played a big part in Jon’s resurgence, but the other factor was this situation itself. Jon had adapted to it with an ease that surprised Scott.

He reached the edge of the woods near the highway. There was no Jeep. He waited quietly anyway, Max stoically by his side. They had figured Frank would have to go into town to make a phone call to his bosses. The question was, would he come back?

He did. After fifteen minutes of waiting, the Jeep turned off the highway and slowly pulled into a half-moon shaped open space next to the entrance to the road. He parked on Joe’s side, face out, but just sat in the Jeep. It would be more difficult to take care of him unless he got out.

After about twenty minutes, Frank emerged from the Jeep, stretched, and came over closer to Scott’s side, where he unzipped his pants and started to relieve himself. In deference to his manhood—no guy should be attacked while taking a leak—Scott waited for him to finish. While Frank was zipping up, Scott gave Max the signal to attack.

Max was a blur of gray as he shot out of the woods and landed on the guard. Frank’s hand wasn’t even off his zipper yet. Max had him pinned down and was growling, as if to say, “
Your ass is mine. You’re under arrest
.”

Scott and Joe hurried out from their hiding places and approached the guard, who had an expression of sheer terror, Max’s face two inches from his own. Scott gave Max the necessary positive reinforcement while Joe slipped the guard’s pistol from its holster.

“Off, Max,” said Scott, and Max got off the guard, but still watched him warily.

“Get up,” said Joe.

Frank got up slowly and Joe grabbed him by the neck and pulled him into the woods. Scott had found a small trail off the road on his way up, so he jumped in the Jeep, leaving Max to help guard Frank, and drove it down to the path and stashed it deep in the woods. He made his way back up to Joe, his gun pointed at his prisoner, who sat by a tree.

Joe was asking, “How many are coming?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” replied Frank in a surly voice.

“You have a chance to live,” said Joe. “Just give us the information we need.”

“What chance? You’re going to kill me no matter what. Doesn’t really matter. Even if you don’t kill me, my employer will. He already said that if we screw up, we’re dead.”

“Then why’d you come back here?” Scott asked. “If they’d already threatened you, why didn’t you just keep on driving?”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Uh, no.”

“I wouldn’t last a day. Do you have any idea who you’re up against?”

“No, tell us.”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know. I just know they are as powerful as shit and taking a job with them was the worst thing I ever did. I figured that if I stayed the course, maybe I could talk my way out of it. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. I’m a dead man.”

Scott was starting to feel sorry for the guy. But when he remembered that he was ready to kill any one of them—especially Jess—down in the town, his sensitivity toward him lessened.

“What’s in the mine?” he asked.

“Beats the hell out of me. We weren’t allowed to go in.”

“So I’ll ask again,” said Joe. “How many are coming?”

“I don’t know who they’re sending. What I can tell you is that you’re dead too. No way are you going to get out of here alive.”

“So basically,” began Joe. “You’re just a grunt who was hired to kill people.”

“I was hired to keep people out of Wisdom Spring.”

“Right,” said Joe. He looked at Scott, “You want to check the highway and make sure no one is coming.”

“Sure.” Scott wasn’t stupid. Looking down the highway would be useless. It was too early for reinforcements to arrive. He knew why he was going. He also knew there was no way to stop what was about to happen. And he wouldn’t stop it even if he could. People make their own futures.