Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

The file Braxton had stolen would lead them in dizzying circles.

Shaw fired up the camper’s engine, dropped the transmission into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, now filled with rescue vehicles, smoke and excited shoppers taking selfies with the smoldering SUV.

He steered south. In seven or eight hours he’d be at his destination: San Francisco, his specific journey’s end. Ashton’s safe house on Alvarez Street.

As he piloted the comfortable — and comforting — vehicle along the smooth highways, Colter Shaw was thinking this: it was a possibility, of course, that Ashton had hidden the package for the benefit of his colleagues, who’d decided to forgo the safety of anonymity and take on BlackBridge once again.

But if so, why hide the material on Echo Ridge? He could easily have picked a place in the Bay Area.

No, the more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that the letter was directed not to any colleagues, but to one of his children . They alone would know how his mind worked — the scent tracking, for instance — and could find the document, when no one else could.

They alone had the wherewithal to confront the risks posed by BlackBridge. Ashton had, of course, trained them so rigorously throughout their young lives in the fine art of survival.

But which of the siblings did Ashton intend the letter to be read by?

He had an inkling that it was he, Colter the Restless One, who’d been in his father’s thoughts when he set down his plea for help in the letter, jotting in such fine penmanship, better even than Shaw’s.

The odds that this was Ashton’s intent? Impossible to say. Maybe ninety percent, maybe ten.

In the end, it didn’t matter. Colter Shaw had made his decision. The father’s quest was now the son’s.

Cults and cult-like organizations — of which there are presently tens of thousands active in America — have been the subject of voluminous books, articles and documentaries over the years. Here are a sampling of titles from some of the sources I found helpful in researching The Goodbye Man , if you’re interested in further reading:

American Messiahs by Adam Morris;

Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church by Lauren Drain;

Born into the Children of God: My Life in a Religious Sex Cult and My Struggle for Survival on the Outside by Natacha Tormey;

Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult by Jayanti Tamm;

Daughter of the Saints: Growing Up in Polygamy by Dorothy Allred Solomon;

Girl at the End of the World: My Escape from Fundamentalism in Search of Faith with a Future by Elizabeth Esther;

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright;

Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion by Benjamin E. Zeller;

In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family by Nansook Hong;

A Journey to Waco: Autobiography of a Branch Davidian by Clive Doyle, with Catherine Wessinger and Matthew D. Wittmer;

Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn;

Prophet’s Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints by Sam Brower;

Radical: My Journey out of Islamic Extremism by Maajid Nawaz;

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn;

Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me by Ron Miscavige;

Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the People’s Temple by Deborah Layton;

Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife by Irene Spencer;

The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir by Ruth Wariner;

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up In a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall with Lisa Pulitzer;

Stories from Jonestown by Leigh Fondakowski;

A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown by Julia Scheeres;

Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini;

Massacre at Waco: The Shocking True Story of Cult Leader David Koresh and the Branch Davidians by Clifford L. Linedecker;

The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology Tried to Destroy Paulette Cooper by Tony Ortega;

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer;

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche by Haruki Murakami;

The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult by Jerald Walker.

Writing a novel is, for me at least, never a one-person operation. I’d like to thank the following for their vital assistance in shaping this book into what you have just read: Mark Tavani, Madeline Hopkins, Danielle Dieterich, Julie Reece Deaver, Jane Davis, Francesca Cinelli, Seba Pezzani, Jennifer Dolan and Madelyn Warcholik; and, on the other side of the pond, Julia Wisdom, Finn Cotton, Felicity Blunt and Anne O’Brien. And my deepest gratitude, as always, to the incomparable Deborah Schneider.