Piercing the Darkness (68 page)

The door cracked open a little more. “Just what do you want from me?”

Marshall tried to sound compassionate despite the urgency that kept making his voice tense. “How much longer do you want this to go on? You can be their puppet for the rest of your life, or you can help us put a stop to it.”

Parnell was silent for a moment. Then he opened the door wide enough to pass through. “Come inside before somebody sees you.”

Parnell’s wife was beside him. She was dark-haired, stout, and looking as troubled as he was. “This is Carol. We can talk freely in front of her; I’ve told her everything.”

“Would you like some coffee?” she said quite mechanically. It was clear she didn’t know what else to do.

“Yes, thank you,” said Marshall, and Ben accepted as well.

“We’ll sit in the dining room,” said Parnell, leading them through the house.

They sat around a large table under a dimly glowing chandelier. The low, somber lighting seemed to match Parnell’s mood; he looked worn, tired, at the end of his strength.

Without cue or question, he started talking as if he’d saved this story for years. “The transient was a thirty-two-year-old woman named Louise Barnes—she was homeless, a scavenger, no family. She was found dead in the woods along the Snyder River, about six miles north of Bacon’s Corner. I remember the details perfectly because I want so much to forget them.” He paused to gather his thoughts and control his emotions, then continued. “Her body was found hanging by the ankles from a tree limb, the blood drained. There were abundant signs of bizarre, ritualistic murder that I won’t go into. The hunters who found her had apparently startled the killers, who fled before they could dispose of the body altogether.

“I received the remains and finished the autopsy. I found the cause of death to be homicide, of course. But then . . . as you have already heard, I did get into a mishap near the high school on my way home. I didn’t see the girl, Kelly Otis, until she stepped from behind a tree and into the street, and . . . and I hit her. I slowed just enough to look, to see that she was still alive though injured. Some other people were running to help her. I . . . I just couldn’t let the incident damage my career. I’d just gotten the coroner’s job, and you know how the political world is, how fragile a reputation can be. I fled.

“Sergeant Mulligan came to my office the next day, and we met in private. I expected him to question me about the hit and run, but he immediately asked me about the body of Louise Barnes and what my findings were. I told him, and that’s when he made the offer to let the
hit-and-run incident pass, just bury it, if I would alter my findings and not report the real cause of death.” Parnell just stared at the table, his face etched with pain. “I accepted his offer, filed the cause of death as accidental, and it was the worst decision of my life.

“There have been three ritual murders since then that I know of, and I’m sure many more that no one will ever know of. The three brought to me I quickly wrote off as accidental deaths. They were unknowns, possible runaways. I was hoping they would not be missed, but simply buried and forgotten, and that’s what happened.

“But you see, I knew Sergeant Mulligan and his friends would be watching me. I knew I would have to perform to satisfy them, and so, with each murder I concealed, I fell deeper and deeper under their control, and that’s where things stand at the present time.”

Marshall asked, “Just who are these people?
What
are they?”

Parnell reached into a cabinet and pulled out a file folder, then set it before him closed, his folded hands resting on top. Carol brought the coffee and sat down beside her husband, putting her hand on his arm and saying nothing.

“If you want a name to call them, you can use the term Broken Birch. It’s a secret label they share among themselves. They’re a coven of witches, Satanists, occultists, whatever you wish. They’re linked with hundreds of other such groups across the country. And taken together, these people wield incredible power, mostly through terror.”

“And they’re responsible for those ritual murders?”

Parnell looked at the telephone hanging on the wall. “You should know that right now I can pick up that telephone, call any one of six different phone numbers, and have both of you dead within twenty-four hours. The other side of that, however, is that there are other parties who can make the same call regarding me, and I could be dead just as quickly, and may very well be if they find out I’ve talked to you. Unknowns and transients are used for ritual sacrifices; people who are known and would be missed are . . . Well, fatal accidents are arranged for them.”

“Can you tell us who belongs to this bunch?”

Parnell shook his head slowly for emphasis. “First of all, I don’t know all of them. Secondly, I wouldn’t tell you if I did. I can only confirm what you already know: Sergeant Mulligan is involved, and has
been for years. As I understand it, he and some of the men from the local lodge checked it out and found the transition very easy. Because he holds such power in town and is head of law enforcement, they were quite willing to include him.”

“Can you confirm Claire Johanson?”

Parnell hesitated, and then answered, “Yes.”

“What about her boyfriend, Jon Schmidt?”

“Yes, he’s part of it.”

Ben wondered, “So what about all those people involved in the LifeCircle fellowship? Do they tie into this?”

Parnell shook his head emphatically. “They aren’t supposed to know about it. All those well-meaning people being pulled into the LifeCircle group are simply being used and manipulated; they have no idea that Broken Birch is at the core of it, and they have no idea what their leaders are really up to.”

Marshall asked, “What about Donna Hemphile? Is she a part of Broken Birch?”

“I believe so. It’s hard to be sure sometimes, they hide it so well.” Parnell drew a breath to change gears, then opened the file folder. “Here’s what you really want to know, and all I really want to tell you.”

He distributed the contents of the folder on the table in front of Marshall and Ben. With great interest, the two men examined several police mug shots and the rap sheet on a young, beautiful, black-haired woman.

“Not Sally Roe, obviously,” said Parnell.

Ben recognized her. “The dead woman we found in the goat shed.”

“I did some checking on my own. Her name is Alicia Von Bauer, twenty-seven, a Satanist, a member of Broken Birch. You’ll note her criminal record: animal mutilations, public nudity and perverse behavior, prostitution, pornography. I might add to that list ritualistic murder, but who could ever prove it?”

Marshall asked, “So you think this Sally Roe thing was another ritual murder, or at least an attempt at one?”

“Exactly. It’s clear to me that her death was arranged, and it was supposed to appear to be a suicide.”

“That’s how you recorded it, anyway,” said Ben.

Parnell nodded. “With an unforeseen additional service: identifying
the body of Alicia Von Bauer as that of Sally Roe. I do what I’m told, Mr. Cole. But obviously, something went terribly wrong, and all I can figure is that Sally Roe—or something else—overpowered Von Bauer, and Roe escaped.”

“That’s our theory,” said Ben. He picked up the most recent photograph of Alicia Von Bauer for a closer look. The deep black eyes seemed to stare back at him from the page. It was eerie.

Marshall asked, “Where’s the body now?”

“Cremated. We did that as soon as possible.”

“Disposing of the evidence?”

“Exactly.”

Marshall didn’t know if he’d get an answer to the next question. “Mr. Parnell, we have a lot of reason to believe that this attempted killing isn’t just a Broken Birch affair. What about the big people Claire Johanson and Jon Schmidt are connected with? Would they have something to gain?”

“I think you’re on the right track. I’m sure the order for the murder came from someone higher up.”

“How do you know?”

Parnell even smiled a little. “Because it’s the first time I’ve seen Sergeant Mulligan afraid. Not long after I collected the body, Mulligan called me, asking if I’d found any personal effects on the body, which I hadn’t. I could tell he was getting pressure from someone much higher, much more powerful than him or his Broken Birch friends. He was desperate enough to tell me what to look for, something missing that should have been there.”

“Yeah,” Ben recalled, “I asked you about that. Somebody even ransacked the rental house.”

“So what was missing?” asked Marshall.

“A gold ring,” Parnell answered. “Someone took it off Von Bauer’s finger with cooking oil. I found traces of the oil still on Von Bauer’s finger. The other thing missing was ten thousand dollars in cash.”

Marshall and Ben looked at each other. They both had the same thought.

Ben spoke it. “Somebody hired her.”

“Who?” asked Marshall.

Parnell shrugged. “I’d advise looking for someone rich, influential,
and very powerful.”

Ben responded, “A mighty big mole, Marshall.”

Marshall had no comment. Right now he was overwhelmed with a sudden, flesh-crawling fear he hadn’t felt since a few years ago in Ashton, when it seemed all the evil in the world was about to crash down on him. A mole? Suddenly the analogy was inadequate. What Marshall felt was more like a dragon, a monster—dark, insidious, clever, and big enough to fill the sky, with jaws gaping just above them, dropping to the kill, closing like a vise.

FAR AWAY FROM
Bacon’s Corner, and still hidden from her enemies, Sally Roe sat among the floor-to-ceiling shelves at the downtown library in Henderson, flanked on every side by invisible angelic guards, and paging through a massive National Bar Association directory of attorneys. She had a hunch, only a guess, but in her thinking it was the strongest possibility.

At her elbow sat Volume IV of the four rosters she had stolen from Professor Samuel W. Lynch’s office, its full title:
A Continuation of the History and Roster of the Royal and Sacred Order of the Nation.
Each of the four volumes contained about two hundred pages. Most of the pages were devoted to weird, esoteric, ceremonial mumbo-jumbo, secret rites and initiations, minutes of meetings, and bylaws. At least fifty pages in each volume were dedicated to the names of members. The pages of names held her attention for the time being; she’d been scanning them for hours.

She now had another volume lying across Volume IV to hold it open to page 68,
The 168th Brotherhood of Initiates.
Like the 167 pages in this and the three volumes that came before, this page listed the names of new members brought into the Order of the Nation in one particular year, and contained two columns of fifteen names each. The column on the left contained bizarre, esoteric names like Isenstar, Marochia, and Pendorrot. The column on the right contained real names, some of them even familiar. Two-thirds of the way down the left column, she’d found the name she had looked through several years’ worth of pages to find: Exetor.

At first, Exetor was just a mysterious word she’d found engraved
on the inside surface of the ring she’d taken from the finger of her would-be assassin. Until she stole the rosters and studied them, the engraving made no sense at all. When she finally found page 68 in Volume IV of the rosters, it made a lot more sense. Exetor was a secret name or title, ninth on the list of fifteen. Directly opposite the name Exetor, in the right column, was the real name of the man who had received the title.

“James Everett Bardine.”

James Bardine. He’d been initiated into the Sacred Order of the Nation along with fourteen other men twelve years ago, and upon his initiation had been granted the secret Brotherhood name of Exetor and his Ring of Fellowship bearing his secret name.

Very impressive, even spooky, and not to be scoffed at. The Nation could have been just another lodge or fraternal organization, some secret society or club where all the good old boys could get together, have a secret meeting with its oaths, handshakes, funny hats, and rituals, and afterward down some beers and be rowdy. Almost every town had a lodge or secret order of some kind.

But the Nation went beyond that. It bound a lot of familiar names together and gave them at least this society in common. She’d found the name of Samuel W. Lynch among the 129th Brotherhood of Initiates—he’d been initiated into the Nation fifty-one years ago, and as he showed her in his office, still kept his cherished Ring of Fellowship.

The second ring in her possession—the one she’d hidden for ten years under the brick windowsill in Fairwood—bore another secret name, Gawaine, but she already knew whose ring it was. She quickly found his name at position seven, opposite the name Gawaine, in the 146th Brotherhood of Initiates: Owen Jefferson Bennett, initiated thirty-four years ago when a senior at Bentmore University.

Good old Owen. There were so many things he never told her.

All this was fascinating, of course, but first and foremost in Sally’s mind at this moment was the name of James Everett Bardine. The Nation was a strictly male organization, but a female assassin was wearing his ring. What was the connection? Who was Bardine in the first place?