The Prophet Motive (31 page)

“Whatever you say, John, you’re the one with the gun. But before you run off to save the world, could you do me one favor? Could you please leave the bathroom door open? And the TV on in the other room? It’d give us something to do.”

“No problem,” John said, unable to hide a little smile, then unable to resist shaking hands with Eddie covertly, away from the guard’s gaze.

Two hours earlier, as soon as Ezra Dean had left for the night, John had told Eddie, “I need to escape from here.”

Eddie had blanched. “Say what?”

“Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“This may be our only chance to find Daryl Finck!”

“I don’t understand.”

“All I have to do,” John said, “is escape from here, and return to Earthbound pretending that I’m still one of the true believers. The police will be looking for me, and the cult will have to hide me somewhere. Somewhere safe. Quite possibly in the same place where they’ve hidden Daryl Finck.”

“But why do they have to hide you?” Eddie said. “What’s to prevent Piper from simply turning you over to the cops?”

John pointed to the door. “Ezra Dean. He’s a big-time deprogrammer. I knew I’d heard his name before, and guess where. In Tom Mahorn’s apartment, on the night I got caught outside the Men’s Guest Quarters, when I was supposed to be locked inside. At first Mahorn thought I might be spying for Ezra, or for another deprogrammer, trying to learn more about the cult, I guess, or locate someone Ezra had been hired to snatch. Ezra and his kind are why Earthbound’s got all that high-tech security.”

“I still don’t get it. How does Ezra help you get back into the cult’s good graces?”

John had explained. Over the next two hours, they’d developed an escape plan and made the necessary preparations.

Now John stuffed Eddie’s own socks in the man’s mouth and secured the gag with a cloth strip. Then he tied the four ankles of his prisoners together with their own belts, so there would be no loud kicking, and took Eddie’s car keys and wallet and the guard’s door keys from their pockets. In the bedroom, John switched on the television, waved goodbye, and raced out of the secure unit.

Eddie had reconnoitered the Wellspring Institute half an hour earlier, so John knew the best route to take to avoid being seen. He bounded, three steps at a time, down a nearby stairwell leading to the darkened basement laboratories.

In a prep room, he located the window Eddie had described, high and long and narrow. He busted out the glass using the base of a large canister, dragged a chair beneath the opening, stood on it, and squeezed his body through the window, rolling into the walled courtyard he had seen from the window of his own private room. He scaled the nine-foot wall, his fingers clawing the top, the tips of his shoes digging into the mortar lines, and dropped to the sidewalk, only twenty feet away from where Eddie’s police issue sedan was parked at the street curb. He unlocked the door, jumped in, and raced away.

He kept his pedal-foot heavy and monitored the police radio, just in case. He stopped only twice, once for a bathroom break and some gas at a truck stop, and once outside Fresno, when he slipped into one of his altered states and pulled over to the side of the highway until it passed—until he remembered who he was, where he was going, what he was planning to do.

“You sure you’re up to this?” Eddie had asked him.

“I have to be,” he’d answered.

Three hours after escaping the Wellspring Institute, John blew by the exit for Marilyn’s motel on the outskirts of Visalia. There was no need to involve her, and what he had to say to the woman could keep. Besides, she would only try to talk him out of his plan. Or worse. She might phone Deputy Fry, who could arrange for a cruiser to cut him off before he ever reached Earthbound.

Twenty minutes later, shortly before two a.m., he reached Natural High Farms. There had been no calls about him over the police radio. He stopped his vehicle in front of the closed gate next to the old red farmhouse and honked his horn.

A guard came running . . .

“Shit,” Tom muttered as he dropped the phone back in its cradle. He hated when duty interrupted his sleep. He sat up, stood up, and stumbled into his trousers before slipping on a Tee shirt. On the way out of the bedroom, he swept up his keys from the dresser top and glanced at Karen and Pamela, their nude figures sprawled across his waterbed. He envied their stillness—enough to slam the back door as he stepped out into the night.

The guards were holding some man who’d driven up to the front gate, someone in pajamas claiming to be a member of Earthbound. Probably had been once. Probably, it was one of those weak-minded people that Piper’s mind games had fucked up too much. Someone who’d lost his marbles completely and had to be dropped on the doorstep of relatives, or the county mental hospital. Now, whoever it was wanted back in.

He unlocked the rear door of the farmhouse, passed through the brightly lit main office, and strode toward the two guards who stood chatting by the front door. Seeing him, they both motioned toward the reception area, off to the right.

No sooner had he taken the corner into the reception area than a man leapt off the sofa and charged him. Tom couldn’t believe who it was.

“Brother Tom!” John Richetti shouted. With a crushing bear hug, he lifted Tom clear off his feet. “I’m back! Isn’t it amazing? It all happened just like The Wizard said it would!”

“W-what happened?” Tom asked as John put him down.

“Don’t you remember? You said if I did exactly like The Wizard instructed, then he’d see to it that I returned here to Earthbound. And here I am, quick as can be!”

“You . . . you’re supposed to be incarcerated.”

“I know! I know! But I found my chance to escape, and I took it! Isn’t that great! It’s a miracle! I’m back! I’m really back! The Wizard’s prophecy has come true!”

Dazed, Tom plunked himself down on the sofa. “You escaped?”

“Yeah. From the mental hospital. I took a gun away from one of the guards, then I tied him up, along with a cop who was checking on me. Took his car keys and came straight here. Clean getaway. I guess the Wizard was really looking out for me.”

John grinned and panted like a long lost dog that had just found its way home. The dumb cop still hadn’t snapped out of it. He was still under The Wizard’s spell.

“Oh, but there’s something I need to tell you, Brother Tom, before I forget. There was this little bald, white-bearded guy at the hospital, who wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept peppering me with questions about the farm. He already knows quite a lot about us. Claims he has a spy here.”

“Shit!” Mahorn said, standing. “Ezra Dean!”

“Right,” John said. “That was his name. How’d you know?”

“He’s a deprogrammer, you idiot!”

“Oh, right. He told me that. He told me a lot of stuff. He wouldn’t stop talking, in fact. By the way, he doesn’t like The Wizard, Tom. He has these crazy ideas about him.”

“Stay here,” Tom said. “I’ll be right back.”

Upstairs in Brimley’s office, Tom telephoned The Wizard in Mexico. His boss hit the roof immediately.

“It’s your fault, Tom! My whole fucking empire is falling down around my feet, and it’s all your fault! Why the hell did I ever hire you!”

“There’s no time—”

“If you don’t get these god damn leaks plugged—”

“There’s no time for you to go ballistic! You can do that later! The cops could show up here any minute, looking for John! We have to decide what to do!” Tom waited out the silence on the other end of the line.

“Are you sure he’s still ours?” Piper asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think so. You’re the one who’s good at reading people.”

“Dean’s top notch,” Piper said. “It’s not likely, but it’s possible that he could’ve turned John around this quickly. Therefore, it’s possible that our shining detective is back to resume his investigation. Not with the blessing of his police force, of course, but acting alone. Seeking revenge. Or trying desperately to save what’s left of his tattered career.”

“If you say so.”

“If I was sure he was still ours,” Piper said, “I’d hide John from the cops, then we could interrogate him, to find out who Dean’s spy is, or at least narrow down the suspects.”

“But how can we be sure—”

“Let me finish my train of thought. Assume he’s still ours for now.”

“Okay,” Tom said.

“What if . . . What if we hide him, interrogate him, and then dispose of him?”

Tom shrugged. “Why not?”

“That way, we get the information we need to find our new spy, and as an added bonus, there’s no way any of us can ever be linked to the Captain Switzer case because of what’s inside his brain.”

“But what if this is all a trick?”

“Then there is no Ezra Dean spy, but John still dies.”

“I understand. Where do I take him?”

“Where do you think? Once it gets out that a cop turned cop-killer has escaped, every law enforcement official in America will be looking for John. You need to get him out of the country fast. Leave now, in fact. Take him to the safe house in Europe. I’ll arrange for you to have the establishment all to yourself. When you’re done with the interrogation, immobilize John with the remote control, and strangle him quietly. The neighbors aren’t too far away.”

“I know what to do with the body.”

“Tell me,” Piper said. “Tell me your plan precisely. You’ve fucked up enough things lately. I can’t afford to have you fuck this up too.”

“I’ll hide the body in the woodshed till midnight, and then I’ll have Daryl carry it for me, to that big lake nearby, while I carry one of the canoes. Then we’ll row out into the middle of the lake and dump the body.”

“Damn it, Tom! Don’t forget to weigh the corpse down! Use chain and cement!”

Marilyn was tied to a bed in the recovery room of the infirmary when the police stormed the farm. The heavy stomp of their boots and their angry voices sounded from all directions, shaking the walls, it seemed.

“Police!”

“Where is John Richetti?”

“We want John!”

“Where is he?”

“Police!”

Their cries made no sense to her. John Richetti was two hundred miles away, in the Bay area, incarcerated at Wellspring.

Or was he? Or was she hallucinating all this? Had she been drugged, secretly, by her captors? It was all so confusing.

“Help!” she cried, just in case the police were real. “Help me, I’ve been kidnapped!”

The door flew open. Nurse Karen rushed to her bedside and slapped Marilyn’s face. “Shut up, bitch!”

“Help!” Marilyn cried. Karen punched her in the nose, drawing blood and silence. Doctor Fosse appeared, staunched the bleeding with a pad of cotton, and proceeded to gag Marilyn with a tightly rolled towel, tied and knotted at the back of the head.

Karen began to yank down all the window shades. She’d nearly finished when Marilyn caught a glimpse of a rifle-toting police officer jogging by, decked out in SWAT gear. He didn’t see her.

Doctor Fosse shoved the bed next to Marilyn’s about two yards into the center of the room. In the newly exposed floorboard, at a spot beneath where one of the bedposts had left a scuffmark, was a round hole roughly the size of a quarter. She curled two fingers inside the hole and lifted. A large section of floorboard gave way, the full width and half the length of the bed. A trap door.

Doctor Fosse needed Karen to assist her in removing the heavy rectangle. They placed it atop one of the empty beds. Together, the women untied Marilyn’s arms and legs and jerked their captive to her feet. Doctor Fosse gripped Marilyn by the arm and led their descent into a dark stairwell. Karen stayed behind. At the base of the stairs, the doctor flicked on some lights.

From the elevated view of the bottom stair, Marilyn found herself peering ahead, through glass windows, at a clandestine operating room. Here was where The Wizard toyed with brains. Here was all the evidence a prosecutor would need to lock up L. Rob Piper forever. But would she live to share its location?

They entered the operating room through a pair of thick double doors, whose purpose, she knew, was to help guard against infection by keeping in the filtered air that would be pumped in through vents. In the center, beneath a bank of low-hanging lights, which were not switched on, stood the operating table. Parked in the corners of the room were a scrub sink and X-ray and CAT-scan equipment. On top of a prep table sat the distinctive, halo-shaped frame of a stereotaxic instrument. Its purpose was to hold the patient’s head motionless during brain surgery and to help define a trajectory to the intended site of the electrodes.

“Hop up now,” Doctor Fosse said, patting the operating table. “You have a new bed.”

Marilyn shook her head vehemently. Doctor Fosse shouted for Nurse Karen, and two quickly overpowered one.

Marilyn was tied to the operating table using four-point restraints. Her captors retreated, turning off the lights on their way up the stairs, and slid their heavy trap door back in place.