John Thompson - Armageddon Conspiracy

“Out here!”

He ripped open the front door and saw her, gun drawn, down in a shooter’s crouch. “You okay?” he shouted.

Before she could answer, there was another shot followed by a hollow thump. Brent jumped back and aimed up the stairs.

“Reverend Turner, Mrs. Turner,” Maggie shouted. “Throw down your weapons and come to the top of the stairs with your hands up.”

Brent held his breath. Seconds passed. The same dog still barked. Had the neighbors heard the shots?

“Reverend Turner!” Maggie called again. “Come down stairs with your hands in the air.”

Silence.

“Reverend Turner,” Maggie called. “I’m going to count to ten.”

She began to count. When she finished, Brent put his foot on the first step. “I’m coming up,” he shouted.

He crept up the narrow staircase, his gun gripped in both hands, finger brushing the trigger. He paused, listened, and then shoved his fear into the background.

Harry’s voice was right there with him, as though the two of them were climbing the stairs together. Life’s best when you’re on the edge, bro!

Brent shook his head. Harry had his head up his ass.

At the top of the stairs, his pulse slammed his eardrums. Otherwise, there was a deathly stillness. A strong metallic odor came from an open door on the right.

He risked a peek around the corner, half-expecting a shotgun blast in the face. Instead he saw the bodies and the blood. “Oh my God,” he choked, as he sagged against the wall.

“What?” Maggie called.

He shook his head, unable to describe the sight—Reverend Turner in the middle of the floor, most of his jaw missing, a double-barreled shotgun inches from his outstretched hand, Ruth Simmons, or more likely Turner’s wife, sprawled across the bed. Blood and brains splattered the far wall.

“Oh Jesus,” Maggie said as she came up and looked inside. Brent watched her double over and take several breaths, then quickly open the other two doors on the landing and sweep the empty rooms with her gun.

He crushed the heels of his hands against his temples. “Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?”

Maggie ignored him and went back in the bedroom. She was all business as she pulled a pair of rubber gloves from her pocket, slipped them on, and pointed at the woman. “There’s something here,” she said.

Brent didn’t move. After a second Maggie looked back at him.

He pointed. “That was Ruth Simmons.”

“The Justice Department lawyer?”

He nodded.

“Well hurry up. We don’t have much time.”

Brent held his breath and rolled the nearly headless body so Maggie could pull out what she’d seen.

“Family Bible,” she said. “Opened to the Twenty-Third Psalm. She must have been reading it when he shot her.”

“’The Lord is my shepherd.’ It’s like they were prepared for this,” Brent said. He shook his head in disbelief.

Maggie began opening drawers and searching the dresser. She found a thin pair of men’s socks and tossed them to him. “Put them on so you don’t leave prints,” she said. “Check the other rooms.”

Brent glanced in the bathroom then searched a guest bedroom. A cluttered desk stood by the window, and he flipped through piles of magazine articles, partly finished sermons, and stacks of correspondence. He took the letters with return addresses outside Lambertville and a black address book he found on top of the stack of sermons.

“Time to go,” Maggie said from the door. Brent checked his watch, twelve forty-five. It hadn’t even been five minutes since the first shot, but if neighbors had heard it, the police could arrive any moment.

He hurriedly jerked open the desk drawers and rummaged through the cheap two-drawer metal filing cabinet that sat beside the desk but found only manila folders with tax records and files of past sermons. He followed Maggie down the stairs and out the front door, where the cool night air shocked his lungs and the odors of grass and damp earth were like perfume. The neighboring houses remained completely dark.

As they reached the car, he paused for a second to listen. The dog still barked, and somewhere far away a train sounded a single, lonely note.

MORRISTOWN, NJ, JULY 1

THEY’D DRIVEN THROUGH SPARSE LATE-NIGHT traffic all the way to Morristown before Maggie broke the silence. “I have something to tell you,” she said. “It’s been on my mind for a while, but it seemed too crazy like… a tangent or crazy extrapolation.”

“Let me guess—you want to have sex with me?”

She looked at him in utter amazement. Four people were dead tonight, and he was making jokes. “You really are a sick human being.”

Brent shook his head. “Uncle Fred always said that humor is the only defense against the unspeakable.”

“Imagine, a four syllable word coming from Uncle Fred.”

“I thought you liked him.”

“I do, but you’re all crazy, Brent. Everybody in your damn bloodline.”

“I tried to explain that to you a long time ago.”

“Well, try to get your brains out of my pants for five seconds, because I want to explain something.” She told him about the CIA’s alert and the seeming coincidence that the stolen money approximated the cost of the missiles and the nuclear material.

Brent shot her an appraising glance. “That’s why you didn’t want me to turn myself in.”

She nodded, “But I don’t have the slightest clue how to prove it.”

“Biddle is the key,” Brent said. “We have to get to him and make the bastard talk.”

“Kidnapping,” she said with a nod. “Once again, the sophisticated approach.”

“I can’t afford to sit around with my thumb up my ass.”

“Spoken like a true male.”

“What the hell would you do?”

“Get evidence.”

“Spoken like a true cop.”

A short time later, she walked into her house, tossed her keys on the table, and filled two glasses with ice. Exhaustion and stress had put her beyond the reach of caffeine. Cold water was a last resort.

Brent followed her and collapsed in one of the kitchen chairs, resting his head on his arms.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Maggie said. “We have to go through the address book.”

“I’m just resting my eyes,” he said.

“Like you were on the road,” she said, a reference to when he’d dozed and almost run off the soft shoulder.

“Exactly like that.” He yawned, shooting his arms across the table so that he sent his cell phone crashing to the floor.

Maggie bent down to pick up the phone and saw that the back had come off. As she started to put the two pieces back together, she noticed a small chip that had come loose and hung by two thin wires with tiny clips. She put the phone on the table and pointed. “Does that look like it belongs there?”

Brent stared at the chip and then tried unsuccessfully to push it back into the rest of the tightly packed innards so that it fit. “Give me your phone,” he said after a second. She handed it over, and he removed the back. Together they looked at its symmetrically fitted guts. “I wondered about this the other night, but I was in too much of a panic to focus.”

He turned his phone on then pulled a scrap of paper from his wallet. He dialed the scrawled phone number, pressed send and listened. “No answer,” he said. He picked up Maggie’s cell phone, dialed the same number, and held it out so she could hear. After several rings she heard a voice say, “FBI.”

He hung up then stared again at the small chip that dangled from his phone. “I bet this redirected my calls.”

“It probably also tracked you,” Maggie said.