The Prophet Motive (10 page)

Mick, for one, evinced no pain or embarrassment during his turn. In fact, he seemed to relish the chance to describe what horrible monsters his parents had been, and to hear others agree with him.

It came to be Marilyn’s turn. “My mom was a nightclub stripper. She used to bring home guys all the time. I think she slept with them for money, I’m not sure. One night—I must’ve been six years old, maybe seven—I woke up hearing screams. I found my mom in the kitchen, getting beat up by some strange man I’d never seen before. He was punching her, and using his belt to whip her. So I took a knife and I stabbed him in the back. Punctured a kidney. They sent my bony ass away to a residential treatment center for three years . . .”

It was a whopping lie, and yet a likely story for a troubled street kid. The lie protected her inner self too, for it was always dangerous to reveal truly painful emotions to the cult. Such feelings would only be used against you later, drilled like the nerve endings in your teeth.

John’s turn came last. “When I was a small kid, my mother and father joined a cult.”

Marilyn cupped her mouth reflexively.
What is he doing
?

“You’ve probably heard of it,” he said. “The People’s Temple? Jim Jones? That cult.”

I’d told him to lie
, she thought,
but why this lie
?

“My father dropped out at one point,” John said, “taking me with him. But by this time Jim Jones was my legal guardian. He’d made my parents sign over custody, back when they were both still members, and so my dad couldn’t keep me. I had to go back to my mother and the People’s Temple.

“Not long after that, we left San Fran. Moved down to Guyana, in South America. Over nine hundred people down there, it was, because I’m often reminded of the death toll from anniversary coverage on TV and in the newspapers. We lived in an old mining camp in the jungle. It was hell.”

Marilyn peeked at The Wizard’s profile. That little round muscle where the jaw hinged to the face was as hard as a golf ball from clenching. His eyes lasered on John’s.

“The heat, the rains, the mosquitoes,” John said, “you wouldn’t believe. And everyone but the leaders working eleven, twelve-hour days in the fields. Even children, like me. Eating nothing but rice and bread and—if we were lucky—a little rancid meat. I hardly ever saw my mother. We were kept apart on purpose. The revolution had to come before family. But don’t ask me about Jim Jones’s revolution, I was just a kid, and all I know is it had something to do with racial harmony. My revolution, as it turned out, was to survive. I remember when—”

“Lunch time!” The Wizard stood. “Sorry, John. We’ll, uh, finish with you later. Everyone up, grab some gear, and head on down the trail. We have a tight schedule to keep.”

Everyone hopped to their feet but John. The dull mask of a TV viewer or movie-goer slipped over his face, eyes unblinking, boring through time. He’d lost track of where he was, and even who he was supposed to be.

At least now Marilyn understood why he’d volunteered for this mission in the first place. His story of Jonestown had been true. All too true.

She stepped in front of him. He didn’t notice. She bent down at the waist, gripped his fat wrists and tugged, pulling him—willing him—to his feet. Then she whispered into his ear.

“You stupid bastard!”

Hours of hiking in the Sierra foothills had left John in another exhausted stupor. But now, at last, and before losing his wits again, he was being allowed to rest. He sat at the base of a giant Sequoia tree, with the setting sun throwing golden hues across creation like a parting gift.

“How long you think we’ll be here?”

He’d spoken loudly enough for both Mick and Marilyn to hear. The trio sat evenly spaced around the enormous trunk with their backs against the ribbed, seal-brown bark. Leather shackles and iron chains fettered them to the tree and to each other. They couldn’t move much.

Marilyn said, “Considering they’ve just issued us Depenz diapers, I’d say quite a while.”

“Diapers,” John said. “Overalls. This is just a clever plot to make my ass look bigger than Kansas.”

“My pee feels so gross,” Mick said.

“You peed already?” John said. “What did you do? Take a test drive?”

“Yeah.”

Bob Marsh, wearing a straw cowboy hat, Hawaiian shirt, and diaper-less black jeans, supervised two assistants shackling the other recruits to nearby trees. When they finished, Bob strode to the center of the grove and called for everyone’s attention.

“The sequoia is an ancient coniferous California evergreen of great height, tremendous width, and astonishing beauty. We’ll be using these magnificent trees to stage a practice protest against land development.”

Bob paused, smiled. “Maybe now, some of you can guess why it is you’re wearing diapers for the first time in your memory. Or so I presume.” Above some scattered snickering, he continued. “Kick-ass environmental activists, you see, always wear diapers when chained to the precious things they guard. That way they can remain chained for a long, long time, protecting what they love, demonstrating their resolve to the rest of the world.

“My new friends, it’s time for you to demonstrate your resolve. You will be chained here for an indefinite period of time, just as if this were a real event. Now let me ask you: Does anyone not wish to participate?”

“No!” answered the new recruits in near unison.

“Does anyone want to quit the boot camp?” Bob asked.

“No!”

“Anyone want to go home?”

“No!”

“All you have to do is ask.”

“No!”

“Then good luck, eco-warriors!”

Bob and his assistants dashed away, down a hiking trail. The recruits had nothing better to do but watch them go.

“Think they got bears in these woods?” John said.

“Shut up, dude,” Mick said.

John smiled, dropped his chin to his chest, and closed his eyes. When he awoke, nightfall was busy pitching its black tent, and chains rattled all around him. The new recruits were delving into the dinners they’d packed.

From his backpack, John removed a chick-pea sandwich on rye bread and a paper container of coleslaw, along with his bottle of sleeping pills. One by one, he opened seven of the capsules, each time pouring the white powdery contents into the coleslaw. He swished the slaw around with his fork to hide the powder.

“Anyone want my coleslaw?” he asked. “I hate this stuff.”

With a loud rattle, Marilyn whacked John on the shoulder with the back of her hand. He turned to find her scowling at him as he’d expected. She’d instructed him to eat every morsel the cult offered, to keep up his strength and thereby protect his mind.

“I’ll take it,” Mick said. John handed him the slaw.

Thirty minutes or so after polishing off his chick-pea sandwich, John realized he couldn’t hold out any longer. His stomach had begun roiling audibly—the sound not unlike a boat sloshing against a dock. He sighed and released a warm, squishy, long overdue load into his adult-size diapers. The sensation made him shiver. One part relief, one part horror.

Moments later, he heard Marilyn’s voice. “Suddenly, I’m not just smelling the moss and the wet bark anymore.”

“Sorry,” John said. “My stomach’s been upset lately.”

“That’s not by chance,” she said.

Simultaneously, they turned toward Mick, whose head lay against the trunk, cocked at a sharp angle, like a discarded doll’s. “Mick?” John said. “Psst! Mick?”

John turned back toward Marilyn. “No response.”

“Looks like he’s out cold.”

“That’s not by chance either,” he said. “He ought to stay that way till noon tomorrow, considering what I put in his slaw.”

“What was it?”

“Sleeping pills,” he said. “Now, what the hell’s wrong with my stomach?”

“If you’re not used to a vegetarian diet, your lower digestive tract will complain bitterly for weeks.”

“What are you now, a nutritionist?”

“No, a vegetarian.”

“Oh. I should’ve guessed. But why upset my stomach?”

“It’s just another way for the cult to wear you down.”

“They’re damn good at that.”

“So I’ve noticed,” she said. “Jonestown?”

“What? What are you saying? I made that story up, Doc, just like you told me to.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Dumb lie, huh? Guess I should’ve had something else prepared.”

“A fabrication?” she said. “Off the cuff? And yet every detail spot-on?”

“Were they? Must’ve read something somewhere.”

“BS, John. You lost it out there today—lost total perspective—and then you shared something true about yourself with the cult. True and no doubt enormously painful. You’ve compromised yourself and the investigation.”

“Believe what you want, I don’t care,” he said, both arms flailing, semaphores of surrender more than deceit.

She huffed, tossed her head back, and gaped at the gathering stars. “What on Earth do you think you’re doing here? No, don’t answer that. Don’t tell me any more lies just now. Tell me about last night. I saw you taken away by those armed guards.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

John listened briefly to the murmurs of those lashed to nearby trees. His ears snatched a few distinct words from the air, so he inched his smoldering fanny toward her until his chains pulled taut. Then he told his story in a whisper.

When he’d finished, she said, “Deputy Fry must be worried sick. Not to mention Captain Switzer and the rest back home.”

“They’ll be twice as worried tonight, when I don’t show up for the second time in a row.”

“When
we
don’t show up, you mean.”

“Uh, right.”

“You forget about me last night?”

“Good thing I did,” he said. “Considering.”

“Don’t let it happen again.”

He hesitated, then spat his answer. “Okay, fine.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“What choice have you got?”

“You really think you can handle everything on your own, John? With all these paranoid security measures in place?”

“Paranoid is right. You know that guard shack on the perimeter of the central complex?”

“What about it?”

“This morning, on the way to breakfast, I noticed—not too far off in the woods—a twenty foot tall wooden pole with a bank of photoelectric motion detectors running the length of it. Since then, I’ve discovered identical poles spaced at about five hundred foot intervals. I assume they go around the entire perimeter of the central complex. The dorm area has them too.”

“Why? To keep out night-time intruders?”

“That’s right. And to keep people in too, I think.”

“Sounds like overkill. Sounds expensive.”

“Right on both counts. I know security systems. Used to work burglaries. When the system is activated, the sensors shoot out synchronized, pulsed infrared beams. Steadily, continuously. If enough of the beams are intercepted, it triggers an alarm, via radio waves, and it probably throws on the outdoor lights too.

“The threshold for activating the alarm is probably set high enough to allow swaying branches, loose leaves, birds, and small animals to penetrate freely. But a human being trying to get into, or away from, the dorms undetected would be faced with a helluva a problem. Same thing for the central complex. You’d have to go over, or dig under, an invisible twenty foot wall.”

She sighed. “Tough opponent we have here, huh?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Tougher than I’d figured.”

She leaned closer, her eyes a moonlit blue, the same as backyard swimming pools at night. Her whispered voice softened. “We need each other, John.”

John grinned as he shook his head. “You don’t belong here, Doc. But you sure are brave. You’re like an old-time scientist, injecting yourself with experimental vaccine.”

“It’s you who doesn’t belong. You’re the wounded war veteran throwing himself back on the front lines.”

“Guess I deserved that. Guess we deserve each other.”

“Partners then?
Full-fledged
partners?” She offered her hand, white enough in the moon glow to be a glove. They shook, rattling their chains a little. Mick began to snore.

“So, partner,” John said. “About Jonestown today. I’m thinking I must’ve hurt my cover bad.”

“That was my initial reaction. But no. In fact it may’ve helped to protect your cover. Because it’s actually quite common for the ex-members of one cult to eventually join a new cult.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“Many reasons. But often it’s to recapture the thrill one gets—and the sense of importance one acquires—through devotion to an ostensibly great person, or purpose.”

“I can see that.”

“Others return to cult life because they miss the structure of a quasi-military society, or the comforting certitudes of rigid, black and white thinking. Have you ever wondered why it was that you chose police work?”