Alex Kava - The Soul Catcher

“She’s Satan, she’s the Antichrist. Father Joseph sent her to kill me,” Pratt was still yelling. “Why can’t any of you see that?”

“Get him the hell out of here,” Morrelli told Burt, who swung the kid up to his feet and shoved him along, pushing harder when Pratt began to mutter again.

Tully picked up the folding chair and brought it over for Dr. Patterson. She waved him off, looking around the room in search of her shoes. Tully saw one and crawled under the table for it. When he stood up again, Morrelli was on one knee placing the other shoe on the good doctor’s foot, holding her ankle and looking like Prince Charming. It only reminded Tully how much he didn’t like this guy or guys like him. Morrelli turned to him, staying on his goddamn knee and gesturing for the other shoe. Tully surrendered it.

However, when he glanced at Dr. Patterson’s face, she was watching him and not Morrelli.

West Potomac Park

Washington, D.C.

Maggie stopped at the drinking fountain and took long, slow gulps. The afternoon had turned unseasonably warm for November. She hadn’t been far into her run when she peeled off her sweatshirt and knotted it around her waist.

Now she pulled the sweatshirt loose and wiped the dripping sweat from her forehead and the water from her chin as she scanned the surroundings. She looked up and down the Mall, watching for the woman she had talked to earlier, who had given her a long list of instructions but failed to include a single description of what she looked like.

Maggie found the wooden bench on the grassy knoll overlooking the Vietnam Wall, exactly where the woman told her it would be. Then she put a foot up on the bench’s back rail and began her leg stretches, something she seldom did after running, always feeling like she didn’t have time. But this, too, had been requested, as well as the strict instructions to wear nothing that would give her away as a law enforcement officer: no FBI Tshirts, no bulging holsters, guns or badges, no navy-blue. Not even a baseball cap or sunglasses.

Maggie wondered-and not for the first time-what good it would do to talk to someone so paranoid. Chances were, she’d get some delusional perspective, some skewed vision of reality. Yet she felt fortunate that Cunningham and Senator Brier had found someone willing to talk. An aid in Senator Brier’s office had tracked the woman down, and although she had agreed to meet Maggie, she had insisted on remaining anonymous. The cloak-and-dagger game didn’t bother Maggie. As long as this woman, an ex-member of Everett’s church, could provide a view of Everett that Maggie knew she’d never find in any FBI file. And certainly a view she’d never get from her mother.

High school kids outnumbered tourists, scattered all along the sidewalks, hiking up the Lincoln Memorial steps and winding around the bronze sculptures of the Korean Veterans and Vietnam Women’s Memorials. More field trips. Wasn’t that why Emma Tully had been at the monuments the other day? November must be prime time for school field trips, though the educational significance seemed to be lost on most of them. Yes, other than the students there were very few tourists.

Then Maggie saw her. The woman wore faded blue jeans, too loose for her tall, thin frame, a long-sleeved chambray shirt and dark aviator sunglasses. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and Maggie could see that she wore little, if any, makeup. A camera hung from her neck and a backpack from her shoulder while she stopped and reached with paper and pencil to do a rubbing against the Wall.

She looked like any other tourist, a family member completing her journey and paying homage to a loved one, a fallen soldier. The woman took three rubbings before she came over and sat on the bench next to Maggie. She started pulling out of her backpack a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, a bag of Doritos and a bottled water. Without a word, she began eating, looking out over the park and watching. For a minute, Maggie wondered if she had been wrong about this being her mysterious contact. She took another look at the tourists at the Wall. Was it possible the woman had changed her mind and not come?

“Do you know anyone on the wall?” the woman asked without looking at Maggie while she sipped her water.

“Yes,” Maggie answered, expecting the question. “My uncle, my father’s brother.”

“What was his name?”

The exchange was casual, an everyday occurrence between two complete strangers sitting on a park bench in front of the one monument that seemed to touch every American’s life somehow. An everyday exchange and yet so very clever. No way to mistake the details of this question.

“His name was Patrick O’Dell.”

The woman seemed neither pleased nor especially interested and picked up her sandwich again. “And so you are Maggie,” she said with a slight nod, taking a bite and keeping her eyes on a game of tag that had broken out between several of the teenagers up on the hill.

“What should I call you?” Maggie asked, since she’d been given only the woman’s initials.

“You can call me…” She hesitated, took another sip of water and glanced at the bottle. “Call me Eve,” she said.

Maggie caught a glimpse of the bottle’s label: Evian. This was ridiculous. But names didn’t matter as long as she answered her questions.

“Okay, Eve.” She waited. No one was within earshot, and the game of tag was drawing everyone’s attention. “What can you tell me about Everett and his so-called church?”

“Well.” She crunched several chips, offering the bag to Maggie. Maggie accepted. “The church is a ruse to get donations and stockpile money and arms. But he’s not interested in taking over the world or the government. He preaches the word of the Lord only to get what he wants.”

“So if it’s not to overtake the government or even terrorize the government, what is it he wants?”

“Power, of course. Power over his own little world.”

“So he doesn’t even believe?”

“Oh, he believes.” Eve set aside her sandwich and dug in her backpack until she found another bottle of Evian water and handed it to Maggie. “He believes he is God.” She hesitated, picking up her own bottle, wrapping both hands around it, cradling it as if looking for something to hang on to. “He preys on those of us who have no clue who we are, those who are weak and searching and have nowhere else to go. He tells us what to eat, what to wear, who we can and can’t talk to, what we should believe.

“He convinces us that no one outside the church understands or loves us and that those who are not with us are against us and only want to hurt us. We’re told we must forsake family and friends and all worldly materialistic things in order to find true peace and be worthy of his love. And by this time, he’s stripped us of every single individual thing that defined us, until we are absolutely nothing without him and without his church.”

Maggie listened quietly. None of this was news. It only followed the same profile of every other cult she had read about. It simply confirmed their beliefs that Everett’s church was a bogus organization, a smoke screen for his own power-hungry maneuvers. But there was something she didn’t understand. Something she needed to ask. A hint of impatience seeped out in her question. “Why in the world does anyone join?”

“In the beginning,” Eve said in a calm voice, taking her time, appearing to be neither insulted nor intimidated by the question, “you want to believe that you’ve found a place where you finally belong. Where you’re a part of something bigger than you. In not so different ways, we’re all lost souls, looking and searching for something that’s missing in our lives. Self-identity or self-esteem-whatever you want to call it-it’s such a fragile commodity. When you have no idea who you are to begin with, it’s so easy and tempting to become your surroundings. When you feel lost and alone, sometimes you’re willing to give anything to belong. Sometimes you’re even willing to give your soul.”