Authors: Steven James
I stared straight ahead at the house and beyond it. Inadvertently, I wiped my palms against my jeans. My heart wouldn’t stop hammering, my hand wouldn’t stop shaking. The finger that had touched her cheek was still on fire, tingling with the taste of her skin.
The moment stretched itself thin. I could sense Lien-hua’s heart beating, pulsing someplace beside me, finding its own rhythm again, its own unique tempo. Neither of us looked at each other.
“I’m sorry, Lien-hua.”
“Stop.” Then she took a deep breath that might have been a sigh. I couldn’t tell. “Please.”
I peered out the passenger-side window but couldn’t seem to find anything to focus my eyes on. I shook my cup. I’d finished my coffee a long time ago—just coffee grounds left. Nothing worth drinking. I didn’t feel like drinking any anyway. I felt more like shooting myself in the head.
Somewhere between us lurked a forest of unspoken words. Tension still hung in the air, but the words were going to remain unsaid for now. Because just then, the door to the house eased open and Vanessa stepped outside.
“There she is,” I said, leaning forward. Never in my life had I been so relieved and so disappointed to see a stakeout come to an end.
Vanessa glanced up and down the street, pausing for a moment. Her eyes seemed to rest on our car. Then she hurried over to her Corvette, slipped inside, and started the engine.
“She didn’t see us, did she?” Lien-hua whispered.
“No,” I said as confidently as I could. But she might have. Maybe she did.
Vanessa backed out of her driveway.
“All right,” I said. I was glad to be in control of my words again, of my thoughts again. “Time to move.”
I snatched up my walkie-talkie. “Subject is mobile. Heading eastbound toward highway 240. Unit one in pursuit. Please advise.”
“Unit two here,” Brent replied. “I’m close. I’ll back you up. Over.”
Vanessa cruised down Merrimon Avenue and then turned onto East Chestnut.
Lien-hua was keeping her distance, staying just close enough so we wouldn’t lose her, sliding and gliding through traffic like a pro.
Suddenly, Vanessa made a sharp left, racing through a red light. Lien-hua screeched the tires, pulling into the left lane and roaring into the intersection toward an oncoming truck. I was sure he was going to slam into us—into me—but Lien-hua swung the car over the rise of the curb, across someone’s no-longer-quite-so-immaculate-lawn, whipped past the truck, and bounced us back onto the road.
“You drive with an attitude,” I said.
“Comes from having two older brothers with ATVs.”
We’d both taken the events of the stakeout and slid them away into a silent drawer. Closed it tight. Nothing happened. Life was back to normal.
No. It wasn’t.
I radioed Brent Tucker. “Subject turned left onto Charlotte. She might have seen us.”
“Got her,” Tucker’s voice came back. “I’m right behind her.”
Lien-hua made the turn, and we saw the taillights of Tucker’s sedan slide out of sight a quarter mile ahead of us.
“She’s really moving,” I said.
Lien-hua slammed her foot to the floor, and we swooped around the bend.
“She’s entering the Stratford Golf Course,” Tucker called. “I’ve got the east entrance. Go north, cut off the northbound exit.”
Ahead of us the road split.
“Which way?” shouted Lien-hua. “Right or left?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Decide!”
I scanned the streets, tree lines, layout of the neighborhood. “Right.”
She spun the wheel, and we jolted into the right lane. It led us along a narrow strip of county road and deposited us at the north entrance of the golf course.
“How did you know?” she asked as we jumped out of the car, grabbing our walkie-talkies.
“Travel theory. Urban design. I’ll explain later—”
“Male suspect.” It was Tucker’s voice. “In pursuit.”
“Male?” said Lien-hua. “Grolin?”
“Unknown,” came the reply.
Lien-hua and I sprinted across the fairway toward hole 17. I started wishing maybe we’d chosen those mic patches.
“Vanessa’s on foot!” yelled Tucker. “Heading for the clubhouse.”
“Go east,” I said to Lien-hua. “Flare out and see if we can find Grolin before he finds her.” Lien-hua bolted out of sight to the left, and I darted through the trees to the right, up and over a sand trap.
I could see a figure about fifty meters in front of me, crouched low and sneaking toward the clubhouse. I hit the button on the walkie-talkie. “Tucker, where are you?”
“West of the clubhouse.”
“I think I see him,” I said.
“Where?”
“By the golf carts on the south side of the—”
The figure stepped forward, floated into the shadows. Disappeared.
“Wait! I just lost him,” I yelled. I raced forward, pulling my gun out of its holster in midstride. “He’s gotta be close to you.”
“He’s by the west entrance,” came Tucker’s reply. “I’m going in.”
“Wait for Lien-hua!” I yelled.
The Illusionist slipped through the shadows along the tree line and up to the clubhouse. He’d had to change his plans for tonight, adapt, but he was confident it would all work out in the end.
Oh, it would work out beautifully.
Look in this hand while I hide the coin in the other.
I remembered the explosion from earlier in the day.
Is this another
trap?
“Wait for backup,” I told Brent through my walkie-talkie.
“We’ve got this guy,” Tucker responded. “Let’s take him down.” Before I could say another word, Tucker eased through the shadows like a knife and disappeared through a slit in the fence.
Too many people on the scene . . . poor communication . . . someone’s
going to get hurt.
“Pull back!” I said. “Contain the area!”
The Illusionist unholstered his weapon. Sat in the shadows. Waited.
I heard the glisten of breaking glass and rounded the corner. An alarm began to howl. “He’s inside. I repeat, he’s inside.”
I ran forward, stepped through the shattered window. Listened. “Tucker?”
A gunshot.
No!
The emergency lights burst on, red-filtered, coating the room in pulsing scarlet. The alarm siren throbbed through the night. It felt like I was inside a beating heart.
Brum, brum. Brum, brum . . . Brum, brum. Brum, brum . . .
I flew around the corner.
Brum, brum. Brum, brum . . .
The killer. He’s here.
Then movement woven into the shadows. “Who’s there?” I yelled. I snapped on my Maglite and swept the room, flashlight in my left hand, gun in my right. “Who is it?”
Brum, brum . . .
Deep grunts. A fight. Two figures in the corner, in the dark. Movement blurring movement.
Blurring movement.
One of them was a woman. Lien-hua. I saw her spin and kick someone. He fell to the floor. She whipped out her weapon, crouched low, ready to move in.
Then a gunshot. She flew for cover.
I ducked into the shadows. “Lien-hua!” I yelled.
Another shot. From the next room.
My adrenaline was going through the roof. “Lien-hua, are you all right?”
“I’m OK!”
“Tucker, where are you?”
Brum, brum. Brum, brum . . .
Then the person Lien-hua had been fighting was standing up, waving two guns, one in each hand, rushing toward me. Everything was a blur, a red blur. “Drop your weapons,” I screamed, swinging my gun into position. It was too dark to see him clearly; all I could see was his outline against the window. Muffled sounds. “Now. Drop them!”
No reply. He was aiming the guns toward me, coming fast—
Take him down, Pat, or you’re dead.
Before I could pull the trigger I heard two rapid gunshots from my left, and the figure jerked backward into the air and crashed to the ground.
Suddenly the lights were on and Tucker was rushing through the door, waving his gun. “I got him,” he cried. “I got Grolin.” Red light still pulsing.
Pulsing.
We stared at the other side of the room. Two bodies lay on the floor.
One was Vanessa Mueller, shot in the neck.
The other was Joseph Grolin, bleeding from the chest.
A strip of black gaffer’s tape was secured over Grolin’s mouth. Both of his hands were tightly taped, thoroughly taped, around the grips of handguns.
Toy handguns.
“No, oh please, no . . .” gasped Tucker. “What have I done?”
Lien-hua ran to help Vanessa. I rushed over to Grolin. He was still alive.
“Put your gun away,” I yelled to Tucker. “Now.”
Grolin couldn’t get the guns off his hands. He couldn’t drop them.
And he couldn’t rip the tape off his mouth to tell us.
I removed the tape from his face, and he spit out a bloody white pawn.
“Who did this to you, Joseph?” I asked. “Who?”
He swallowed hard, searching for breath. “I didn’t hurt her,” he managed to say. Tears burned in his eyes. He’d been crying for a while, probably knew the cops were coming and had been trying to get free.
“Who?” I said. “Who did this?”
The crimson light beat around us. Brum, brum. Brum, brum . . . He spit up a mouthful of blood.
“Get an ambulance, now!” I shouted at Tucker, who was standing in shock beside me. I leaned closer to Grolin. He was trying to say something.
But it was too late. He gasped one last time and slumped to the ground.
No!
I started chest compressions, but with two gunshot wounds to the chest like that, it wasn’t going to do much good. Brum, brum. Brum, brum . . . “We need that ambulance!”
Lien-hua radioed for help. Tucker was still in shock. “What have I done?” he was mumbling. “What have I done?”
“Why did you have to rush in here, Tucker?” I yelled. “Why couldn’t you wait?”
Sirens. The police were on their way.
Brum, brum. Brum, brum . . .
I tried to beat the life back into Grolin’s shredded heart. It was no use. Joseph Grolin was dead.
And he wasn’t the Illusionist.
Ten minutes later the ambulance was pulling away to take Vanessa Mueller to Mission Memorial Hospital. She might very well die at her place of work. The mood at the scene was grim.
“He rushed me,” said Lien-hua. She was stunned. We all were. “I kicked at his hand when it looked like he had a weapon. He wouldn’t drop it.”
“Each of us is going to have to file a full report on this,” I said. “Figure out exactly what happened here.”
“You saw him, right?” Tucker said to us. “He was waving the guns at me.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. In the end, Brent probably wouldn’t get into disciplinary trouble. After all, the guy was waving what appeared to be two guns at us and wouldn’t verbally respond or drop his weapons.
Of course, he couldn’t do either.
He was just another one of the Illusionist’s pawns.
I was beginning to think we all were.
“The killer lured us here through Vanessa,” I said. “No one shot at her, though, right?”
We all shook our heads.
“All right,” I said. “Then he was here, somewhere. We’ll have the CSIU guys scour the place and have ballistics check the bullet in her neck to see if it matches the bullet that was taken out of the neck of that guy at the parking garage.”
Then I turned to Tucker. “I hate this part, but I have to do it. As the senior agent here, I need you to hand me your weapon. It was used in a lethal shooting, and until a complete investigation can be—”
“I know.” He slapped his gun into my hand. “I know.” His face clouded over, and I couldn’t tell if it was shock or guilt that was sweeping over him. Maybe it was both. He turned and slouched away. I let him go. I felt bad for him, sick to my stomach about the whole thing. But I didn’t really know what else to say.
For the next two hours I answered questions and filled out paperwork for the responding officers until I was bleary-eyed. I was the last one from our team to leave the scene. After catching a ride to my hotel with one of the officers I collapsed on the bed. Tried to sleep.
Ended up doing pull-ups instead.
But my shoulder hurt so bad I had to do them with only one arm.
And with each pull-up I vowed I would catch the Illusionist.
My anger was laced with fresh fire, and nothing short of stopping him was going to put it out.
Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid stood outside the gathering room for a moment and listened.
Beyond the door he could hear a man speaking in a measured, calming, rambling way. He knew the voice. It was Father’s voice, the Reverend Jim Jones’s voice.
And he knew the tape. It was the one in which Father convinced his followers, his family, to line up and die. Over the years Aaron had taught his own family the words. They recited them as blessings over their children, believed in them as if they were holy prayers.
Some people called it the Death Tape.
Kincaid just remembered it as the Final Message.
He opened the door and found his family waiting cross-legged on the lush carpet. A few of the women softly sang an old-time hymn, swaying, their eyes closed.
As he stepped into the room, all the singing stopped. One of the men turned off the recording, and the family members bowed their heads out of respect, lowering their foreheads to the floor, holding their arms out to the side, palms up, like broken wings. He hadn’t taught them this gesture; hadn’t asked them to do it, but over the years it had just become the natural response. They were only trying to honor him, and he wouldn’t deny them that. There was no reason to deny them that.
He loved this group more than he’d ever loved anything in his life—at least it seemed like love to him. It was difficult to tell. They’d taught him so much about himself, so much about his possibilities. But whether it was love or not, whatever he felt toward them, it was a noble feeling. He was sure of that.
“Thirty years ago a great tragedy unfolded,” he began, and as he spoke they sat up again one at a time. “One of the greatest tragedies of that generation. It didn’t need to happen. There was no reason for it to happen. Parents died that day, parents who loved their children. Brothers and sisters died that day. Men and women just like us who had done no wrong, who had broken no law, who had hurt no one, died on that day. Good people. People like you and I died on that day. On that terrible day.”