The Prophet Motive (35 page)

Piper walked toward him furiously. “Because I am The Wizard! No one defies me! No one!” He grabbed Bob’s shirt and pulled him close. “Do you want to go to prison?”

“N-no,” Bob said, trembling all over.

“Then come with me.” Together, they sprinted from the classroom. “Have my pilot warm up the chopper,” he said racing down the corridor, “then stand by for more instructions with this cellular.” Piper handed off the phone. The building exit came within sight. “Now read off the number to me.”

Piper stored the phone number away in his superb memory. Outside, they parted ways, Bob running off toward the helipad, Piper jumping into a black Mercedes SUV hybrid that he’d parked close by as an emergency getaway vehicle. Now he would use it to give chase . . .

John had been shot through the outer hamstrings of his right leg, and the bullet had exited through the center of his thigh. The pain was already brutal, even with his adrenaline pumping so, and his pant leg felt sticky against his skin, soaked in blood. But for the moment, he could run fast enough to keep up with Marilyn, who had to run with her hands bound behind her back.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We can go in any direction”—He paused to gasp for air—“and eventually we’ll run into some cops.”

They were mashing their way through a dark cornfield of young stalks rising only to their waists. Their plan was to avoid the main road for now, figuring that Piper would search for them there first.

John heard a car engine roar behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a pair of headlights bouncing madly across the cornfield’s rough terrain, heading in their direction, closing in. Marilyn tripped and fell. John stopped, the pain flaring in his leg, and helped her up.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” she said as they both took off running again, “but it would really help if I could get my hands free.”

“No time right now, he’s too close.”

Less than twenty strides later, John glanced over his shoulder again and realized that the vehicle would catch up to them soon, especially now that he’d begun to limp badly, the pain intensifying, the muscles of his wounded leg burning, cramping.

“This way,” he said, leading Marilyn off to their right, heading for the big white dairy barn. One of the two huge front doors to the barn was open, and they ran inside to hide.

L. Rob Piper drove with one hand and dialed Bob Marsh with the other, using a cell phone he’d left in the vehicle. “Bring the helicopter to the dairy barn,” he said as soon as Bob picked up. “Land it out in front.”

“Yes, sir,” Bob said.

Piper hung up. Dialed 911.

“City of Visalia Police and Emergency Medical Service,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

“This is L. Rob Piper. Leader of the cult known as Earthbound and owner of the farm that is now surrounded by members of your department and other law enforcement agencies, including the San Francisco PD and the FBI. Now listen very closely to me.”

“I’m listening,” the emergency operator said, her tone overly measured, as if trying to calm a cougar in her path.

“I demand to talk to the person in charge of this siege right now. Otherwise, I will immediately order every member of my cult—or approximately twelve hundred individuals—to commit suicide. You know how crazy we cult leaders can be. Not to mention our followers.”

“Stand by.”

Less than half a minute later, Piper was patched through to someone. “This is Commissioner Holton of the San Francisco Police Department. I’m in charge here. What can I do to end this peaceably, Doctor Piper?”

“It’s very simple,” he said. “I’m flying out of here in my helicopter. I’m taking two hostages aboard. Inspector John Richetti and Doctor Marilyn Michaelsen. I want safe passage, or I’ll kill them both and order twelve hundred disciples of mine to kill themselves, à la Jonestown, only quicker. Before you could possibly reach them. They’ve been rehearsing for years.”

“How do I know you have John and Marilyn?” Commissioner Holton said. “I want to hear their voices.”

“Not a problem. Give me about two minutes. I’ll call you right back.” Piper hung up. Then he parked the vehicle in front of the dairy barn and jumped out, gun in hand.

Marilyn felt a rush of relief when John untied the rope binding her hands behind her back. They were hiding on the ground floor, hunched down in an empty cow milking station. It was dark. John had broken most of the light bulbs.

“Hey, you two!” Piper shouted into the barn. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! We’re going for a helicopter ride!”

She and John peered toward where Piper stood at the open barn door, not forty feet away, standing in front of his headlights, the shadow of his gun visible.

“If he comes in,” she whispered, “maybe we can ambush him.”

“He’s too smart for that. He’ll wait for reinforcements.”

Marilyn heard a loud
moo
. She turned toward the sound and saw the back door open. In the rush to report to their dorms, the dairy farm workers had left it that way, and a few cows from the corral had wandered inside the barn. But she felt grateful. The cows would help disguise their own noises and movements.

“I know you’re in there!” Piper shouted. “So listen up! Here’s the deal! If you help me obtain safe passage out of here on my helicopter, I’ll let you both out somewhere, after we’ve flown away from here! You have my word!” He paused, as if awaiting a response. None came. Piper continued. “Otherwise, the End Time drill will conclude! Only this time, it won’t be a drill! You know what will happen, don’t you, Marilyn!”

“Good God!” she said.

“Sssh!” John cautioned her. “What’s he talking about?”

“He has a suicide drill, John. He began the drill when you first arrived here tonight. All the cult followers are sitting in their dormitories, waiting to be handed a poison pill they’ve been trained to take simultaneously. They’ll do it too, trust me. They could all be dead in a matter of minutes.”

“Holy shit,” John said. She noticed he was standing on one leg, grimacing.

“You’ve got one minute to decide!” Piper shouted. “Exactly one minute! Either come along with me, or twelve hundred people die! Your choice!”

“He’s walking back to his vehicle,” John said. “What the hell do we do now?”

Marilyn straightened. “Not much of a choice, John. You heard him. If we don’t come out, twelve hundred people die. I can’t live with that on my conscience. Can you?”

“No,” he said, “but if we go for a helicopter ride with Piper, he’ll drop us off somewhere, alright, he’ll drop us off at two thousand feet.”

“John.” She gripped his shoulders, brought her eyes to within inches of his own. “We can’t let all those people die.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I have an idea.”

He limped out of the milking station, to the back wall, under one of the few light bulbs still working, and took out a folded piece of lined yellow paper from his pants pocket. When he held it up to the light, she could see a full page of notes, handwritten in small script using a pencil. He began to read something, squinting in the poor light.

“What is it?” she said.

“No time to explain.”

He dropped the paper on the floor and lurched off, into the darkened barn, his head swiveling about rapidly, as if in search of something. Moments later, he entered a small storage room and flicked on the light. She followed him inside, found his eyes frantically darting around the crowded space.

His gaze settled on a small metal desk, its surface crowded with cardboard boxes filled with odds and ends. He tried to open the lower right hand drawer, but it was locked. After a few futile yanks, he began searching through the cardboard boxes, tossing out items left and right, things she thought might be spare parts for the milking machinery. When he didn’t find what he wanted, he began to scour the room.

“What are you searching for?”

“Something to pry the drawer—”

John cut himself off in mid sentence when he noticed a metal toolbox with the lid open. It lay at eye level on a tall wooden shelf. He rushed over to it and removed a screwdriver. Then he returned to the desk, jammed the tip of the screwdriver behind the drawer’s top edge, and prepared to pry it open.

“What are you doing?!” she screamed.

“Getting us a weapon,” John said. “A big weapon.”

When L. Rob Piper saw in the starry night sky that the helicopter was on its way, he returned to the barn entrance. “Time’s up!” he shouted. “It’s now or never!”

“We’re coming out!” John shouted from somewhere deep within the barn. “We’re coming out!”

“Wise choice!” Piper shouted back. As the helicopter approached, he backpedaled to wave the pilot toward the best landing spot. The landing lights of the flying machine were blinding, and Piper had to cup his hand over his eyes and squint to view the barn entrance.

Marilyn emerged first, stepping through the barn’s open door. She sidestepped to her right and halted in front of the closed door, squinting in the beam of his vehicle’s headlights.

Then John emerged, limping badly, halting beside Marilyn. The fool was concealing something in his left hand, a knife, or some makeshift weapon he’d found inside the barn. Piper pointed his gun at him.

“That gun’s not going to do you much good,” John said, half-shouting so that the approaching helicopter wouldn’t drown him out. “Not now that I’ve got one of these.” His left hand swung forward, brandishing one of the neurostimulators vertically.

Piper had to laugh. He lowered his gun, stepped forward, and shouted back. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Inspector? I don’t have any electrodes in my head.”

“No, but he does,” John said, nodding over his shoulder.

Piper watched in confusion as John spun toward the barn and, with his body hugging the edge of the closed door, pointed the neurostimulator inside. Just beyond the open door could be seen a strange stirring of black on black. A moment later, the ground began to quake, and Piper realized he was in danger.

His black bull—his favorite trophy—charged out of the barn, straight at him. Piper raised his weapon and fired. He got off a second round and a third and a fourth before realizing it was too late. Too late to slow the beast.

The bull gored L. Rob Piper through the center of his chest and flicked him high in the air. When his body struck earth again it did not move. The helicopter touched down a few yards away.

John swept up Piper’s gun, whirled, and pointed it inside the cockpit. The blades of the flying machine began to slow. The pilot and Bob Marsh scrambled out, holding their hands up. John kept the gun trained on the two men as he ordered them to lay face down on the ground, spread-eagled. They complied.

Marilyn checked Piper for signs of life, then shook her head at John. She picked up a cell phone from the ground beside the body and walked it over to him. He placed a call while she hugged him tightly, her chest heaving against his own, her face resting on his shoulder.

As he waited to be patched through to Commissioner Holton, John followed the bull’s stumbling silhouette, outside the spray of the helicopter’s lights. The animal collapsed to the ground just as John heard Commissioner Holton’s voice.

“Richetti?” the commissioner said. “Inspector Richetti? Is that really you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, sir. So’s Marilyn.”

“What happened to Piper?”

“He’s dead,” John said. “And the situation here is . . . defused.”

Three months after the death of L. Rob Piper, Marilyn took the morning off from work and drove across the Bay Bridge and into Oakland. The sky was overcast, and slender wisps of fog nuzzled the eucalyptus as she pulled into Evergreen Cemetery in search of John Richetti.

He’d become a controversial figure within SFPD, especially since the rumors of a pending medal of commendation for his actions against the cult leader. To a vocal minority of fellow law enforcement officers, it seemed he would always bear the stigma of a cop killer.

He’d been on injury leave less than a month before abruptly retiring. Then he’d vacated his condo and disappeared.

Eddie Bourne claimed he hadn’t seen John at all, which Marilyn doubted, and Teresa Richetti would only confirm that her divorce from John was now final and that he routinely spent time with their daughter, Angela, under a 50-50 custody split.

The winding cemetery road was deserted until a long line of curb-parked vehicles appeared, and she pulled over and got out. A path led her down a grassy slope overlooking San Francisco Bay to where a couple hundred people had gathered around a small, simple stone monument. Every November 18
^th
a memorial service was held here for the victims of Jonestown. This was the burial site for all of its children as well as hundreds of adults, the unclaimed and the unidentifiable.

The service began with people linking hands and bowing their heads in silent prayer, Marilyn among them. When she raised her head again, she spotted John Richetti, on the opposite side of the monument. He wore a blue pinstriped suit. He was tanned, and he’d lost a good deal of weight, maybe twenty pounds. He was almost handsome.