THE FBI THRILLERS COLLECTION Books 1-5 (34 page)
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Authors: Catherine Coulter
Tags: #Fiction:Thriller
S
ALLY
S
T
. J
OHN
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 150 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 just 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 just 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 diary—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 just 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 just 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.
Catherine Coulter
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
THE MAZE
A
Jove
Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©
1997
by
Catherine Coulter
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
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ISBN:
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First edition (electronic): September 2001
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
W
HENEVER 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
I
T 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, just 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. Just 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 Berkeley. I was the best. I loved making music, all the way from Mozart to John Lennon. I wanted to win the Fletcher competition and go to Juilliard. 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, just across the bay. The Trans-america 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.
