Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

“Our...?”

“Your checking account, both your names on it?”

“Oh.” Emma looked perplexed. “Well, yes. But—”

Crowe grumbled, “What’s this?”

Shaw endorsed the check over to the Youngs and handed it to Larry. This is why he had no intention of returning the reward.

“The fuck?” Crowe snapped.

Shaw said to the couple, “Tanner won’t come cheap.”

Emma said, “I know. But we’ll get a bank loan. We can’t accept this.”

Crowe: “They can’t accept it.”

“It’s done,” Shaw said.

Crowe bristled, then seemed to sense this was a battle he could not win. He pointed a finger at Shaw. “I will get you for this, my friend.” He stalked off down the alley.

Larry waved the check. “If there’s any left over—”

“Get Erick some help. Better therapy than he’s had.”

“We will,” Emma whispered.

Shaw wanted to be gone. He said goodbye to the Youngs and walked back to the rental car. In his mind he heard the exchange between Stan Harper and himself.

Then why did my son kill himself?

I don’t know the answer to that.

He now supplemented his response: Not yet .

Through the windshield Shaw stared ahead at the redbrick walls of the Public Safety Office. He powered up his router and computer and went online, then composed an email to Mack.

He started the car and pulled out of the alley.

A half hour later he was back at the Tacoma RV park, after dropping the poor Kia at the rental company, offering a mea culpa that was heartfelt but not of much significance, given the damage waiver. The new paint job would be on Hertz. The clerk was unfazed.

Stepping inside the homey Winnebago, he was thinking of what lay ahead. As he’d sat in that comfortable lawn chair in Silicon Valley not long ago, he’d been considering which of the two missions to strike out on: going after the reward for Erick and Adam, or driving back to the Compound in the Sierra Nevadas and pursuing the mystery involving his late father.

A professor and amateur scientist — both the political and the natural variety — Ashton Shaw had made a discovery, one so significant and controversial that his life and those of his colleagues were put in danger. He warned his associates about the risks, and promptly moved his wife and three children to a large spread in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There he learned survival skills and trained the children in the same edgy arts.

Ashton appeared to the world to have given up exploring his discovery, while all the time secretly continuing to pursue it. He would travel to places unknown, presumably looking into more details surrounding his finding — whatever it might be.

Shaw might have put his father’s concerns and secretive efforts down to the man’s growing breaks with reality had not several incidents occurred. First, there was Ashton’s untimely death and the deaths of several colleagues. Second, just last week, Shaw’s own close call with the people he believed were responsible for the deaths. They were a ruthless woman named Braxton and her hired killer, Droon, whom Shaw had been thinking of earlier. Shaw had evaded the pair and learned that his father’s discovery was hidden somewhere on the family land, near where Ashton had died, Echo Ridge.

Shaw needed to find the secret. What on earth could it be? Something that exposed corruption in the government? Evidence of other crimes? An invention, maybe a drug that could topple a big pharma company? A military mystery?

He didn’t try to guess.

Never speculate without substantial facts.

A good rule, one of his father’s. Shaw followed it closely much of the time.

Yes, the secret was a burning question and, now that the reward job here was done, his plans to return to the quest would have put him on the road at first light.

Would have...

The quest would have to wait. Plans had changed.

Because of an image seared into Colter Shaw’s mind; Adam Harper’s eerily calm leap into eternity.

His phone dinged with an incoming email. He read the thread, which began with his query to Mack.

To:MMack333@dcserversystem.net

From:ColterShawReward@gmail.com

Re:Request for information

Please find any available information about a self-help-style organization called “Foundation” or “the Foundation.” Logo is an infinity sign. There’s a facility located near Snoqualmie Gap, Washington State.

To:ColterShawReward@gmail.com

From:MMack333@dcserversystem.net

Re:Request for information

Probably the Osiris Foundation, a California C corporation (for profit; unusual, since most of these organizations prefer 501(c)(3) status, nonprofit). Link to the home page for their website is below. Self-help operation of some kind. Very little information on Clearnet, nothing on the dark web. No Wikipedia listing. No social media accounts — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. That is unusual too. I found several online ads for the organization on websites offering help for bereavement, terminal or serious illness, depression and anxiety. Likely the Foundation wants to control its public image and employs scrubbers to eliminate references online.

Shaw scrolled down to the link and clicked on it. He was directed to the site’s home page.

Mack’s email continued:

Eli is probably David Ellis, 41. His internet presence is largely scrubbed too. No web or social media imprint I could find. But corporate and government filings link him to the limited liability corporations that own the Foundation. History of real estate development and running brokerage houses in Florida and California but no records of filings since the inception of the Osiris Foundation. No criminal record.

He read the promo piece again and recalled the uniformed crew in the van parked on the ridge where Adam had died. Smelled like a cult.

An impression borne out by another link Mack had included: to an article from The San Francisco Daily Times . The story was about cults preying on the vulnerable for money or sex, or simply because the leader was hungry for the power that comes from adulation and obedience.

The piece was long, and the author dissected a number of cults. There was a mention of the Osiris Foundation, though a very brief one.

Some organizations appear to be cults, as they have charismatic leaders, demand absolute loyalty, teach spiritual or emotional advancement and require significant financial commitment. However, they are so shrouded in secrecy that it is impossible to say exactly what they are: predatory cults taking advantage of the vulnerable and gullible, or legitimate self-actualization groups. Among these are WayForward and the Thompson Program, both of which are in California, and the Osiris Foundation, in Washington State.

Shaw decided to call the article’s author, Gary Yang, and see if he could tell him more about the Foundation. But when he scrolled to the next page of Mack’s email he read:

Note that Yang was killed in a robbery outside his town house in the Mission District of San Francisco.

The death had occurred one week after the article had appeared.

Never accept coincidence at face value.

Shaw put a connection between the reporter’s death and the article at forty percent, high enough that he felt it was worth looking into.

He went online and called up news stories about the crime. Yang’s killer was Harvey Edwards. He’d shot Yang after demanding his wallet. Then he fled. He was subsequently shot to death by police. A day laborer at the time of the robbery, Edwards had a troubled past, including criminal convictions for assault, burglary and drug possession.