Anatomy of Evil (15 page)

Rodney stood over her. “Hello, honey.”

Kelly saw the others join him in hovering over her. Sam… Gary… Carol… Faces identical in their ice cold expressions.

“I'm sorry for the inconvenience,” said Rodney, “but we're going to leave you here to die.”

Tears rolled from Kelly's eyes, burning as they sunk into the cuts on her face.

“The four of us are going on a trip,” continued Rodney in a chipper tone. “We're going to Atlanta to see your friend, the man you told us about, Calvin Beck. You see, we want to hear more about this second bomb. If it exists, we could have a lot of fun with it. That first inversion bomb…exploding it in the middle of the ocean…off the coast of some tiny island…that's just too remote to have the proper effect. What we'd like to do is take a bomb like that and detonate it in a very highly populated area. Why contaminate eight or nine people when you could influence hundreds of thousands, maybe millions? Think of the number of people we could infect with a really well-placed inversion bomb. We could open the gates to hell right here in a major city and have so much fun. So we're going to get Mr. Beck to tell us where that bomb is. He doesn't know it yet, but we're going to persuade him into telling us…everything.”

Consumed by pain, the words barely reached Kelly. The man speaking them was no longer her husband.

Through her blurred vision, she saw only Satan.

“Goodbye Kelly,” said Rodney. “Time to go night night.”

He pushed the others away from her.

“This is my treat.”

And he beat her into darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Wordlessly, they entered Calvin Beck's room at the Sunshine Way retirement home and closed the door behind them. Beck sat up in bed with a newspaper, watching them in silence. Rodney walked over to the window and shut the curtains, snuffing the daylight. Carol disconnected the phone with a swift tug. Sam pulled the plug on the television, killing the murmur of an old, black and white movie. Gary removed the newspaper from Beck's hands, neatly folded it and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. He then stuck his hand into Beck's face and took his reading glasses. He folded them up and placed them in his breast pocket.

The four visitors formed a semicircle around Calvin Beck's bed.

Rodney spoke. “Laura Newsteader. Thomas Newsteader. Andrew Beck. Ashley Beck. Danny Beck.”

Beck frowned.

“Do you know those names, old man?” asked Rodney.

“Of course,” Beck replied.

“Who are they?”

“They are my grandchildren.”

“Correct. So your mental facilities remain intact, more or less.”

Beck said nothing.

“Let me add a footnote to your answer,” said Rodney. “They are indeed your grandchildren, but they are also something more. They are potential victims of tragedy. For instance, it would be a shame if young Danny was discovered in some bushes with a broken neck…murdered on his way home from Greenbriar Elementary School.”

Beck stared at him. He said, “I recognize those eyes.” He studied each of their faces. “I know that look. I haven't seen it for more than 50 years, but it's something you never forget. You're infected.”

“Infected is a poor word choice,” spoke up Carol. “We have been released. We are pure again.”

“You are evil,” responded Beck.

“Call it what you will, you know what we are capable of,” said Gary. “You know the strength of our conviction. You understand that we would not hesitate to make our point through harm to one of your loved ones. We're no longer programmed to succumb to guilt or shame or obey the rules and morals of others. We will take extreme measures to further our goals.”

“Then what is it you want?” asked Beck. “I told the woman everything I know. What else is there? Why do I matter?”

“You do matter,” said Gary. “You're going to help us take this concept of hell on earth to a brand-new level.”

“I can't help you.”

“But you can. It's easy.” Gary moved closer to Beck, leaning over the bed to stare into his eyes. “You will tell us where to find the second bomb.”

“Second bomb?”

“Don't play dumb, old man. We have no patience for that, and you won't like what happens when we get impatient. So I'm going to ask again and keep it simple. Where is the second inversion bomb? The military created two of them. One was detonated off the shores of Kiritimati. The other remains in a nuclear weapons storage facility somewhere in the United States. Where is it?”

“I don't know.”

Rodney shook his head and formed a fist. “Bad answer. When you say, ‘I don't know,' I don't hear ‘I don't know,' I hear, ‘let one of my grandchildren die.'”

“We'll start with Ashley,” said Carol. “She's the youngest. Then we'll work our way up…”

“Listen to me, you fools!” shouted Beck. “I am telling you the truth. I don't know where it is.”

“But you knew of its existence,” said Sam. “You were on the team that detonated the first one and studied its effects. I'm certain you know about the secret labs and storage facilities that supported your work.”

“It's not there,” said Beck.

Carol headed for the door. “If I leave now, I can be at Ashley's house by dark.”

“Let me explain!” said Beck. “I don't know where it is because it was stolen.”

Carol stopped and turned.

Gary said, “Stolen? How convenient.”

“I don't care what you believe,” said Beck. “I am telling you everything I know. This is highly classified but it still won't help you. Yes, a second inversion bomb was created. It was built in a lab in New Mexico during the Cold War, shortly after the first one. After the first bomb was tested, all plans to continue developing such a weapon were terminated. We recognized what we had created was not just a bomb that could harm masses of people, but threatened all of mankind. We ended the research and testing. The warhead for the second bomb stayed in the lab with plans to move it to underground storage. In 1962, Soviet Union spies infiltrated that facility, led by a KGB man named Yuri Kolstov. Posing as scientists, they staged a deadly raid and killed seven of our men. They took control of the warhead and removed it from the lab.”

“How could they just walk off with an atom bomb?” asked Carol, hands on hips.

“We're talking about a warhead, a cylinder containing just the fission material itself. It wasn't secured to a missile or torpedo. Several men can carry such a device and hide it in a small truck.”

“So they just made off with it?” said Rodney. “We let them walk away?”

“No. We caught up with the Soviets days later. We tracked them down in the desert. A special unit took them down. Some were killed, others committed suicide to avoid capture. Unfortunately, there were no survivors. No one to interrogate, and that was the real dilemma because the bomb was never recovered. The Soviets hid it. Somewhere out there in the thousands of miles of desert, there is the warhead to an inversion bomb and to this day it has not been recovered.”

“Someone must know where it is…”

“The only people who know are dead. There have been many, many efforts to find it.”

Rodney stepped closer to the bed. “You seem to know an awful lot. How do we know you don't know where it is…and you're not telling?”

“I have told you one of the biggest government secrets…scandals…of the past century. I can assure you, I am not holding anything back.”

“I'm not so sure,” said Gary.

“I understand your intentions,” said Beck. “You are disciples of Satan and you have been given a mission. Evil has but one desire—to create more evil. You want to create another portal. You are obvious in your simplicity. So let me be simple in return. Your mission is doomed to fail. The last group of Satan's disciples failed. They were locked up in mental institutions, placed in solitary confinement, where they spent the rest of their lives in a slow, rotting decay. The evil had nowhere to go. I see you as no different. Four sick individuals with grand plans for committing evil…but in the end, you are small, so very small in a world that is dominated by good.”

“I'm going to give you one more chance, old man, to tell us where that bomb is hidden,” said Rodney, grabbing the frame of the bed. “You know more than you're telling us!”

“I suggest the four of you buy four shovels…head into the middle of the desert…and start digging,” said Beck with a smile on his face. “Immerse yourselves in endless repetition. Isn't that what most crazy people do?”

Rodney exploded. He grabbed Beck, lifting his frail body from the bed and tossed him to the floor with a hard thud. After Beck landed, Rodney kicked him, causing Beck to curl like a worm. Rodney grabbed a nearby cane leaned against the wall. He smashed it across Beck's forehead.

“Stop!” cried out Gary.

Rodney continued to bash the cane into Beck's skull, creating a spray of blood. Beck became limp and silent.

Gary pulled Rodney away. “Stop, you maniac. You're making too much noise. You should've strangled him.”

“Let's get out of here,” said Sam.

Carol took a moment to lean over Beck, who lay in an expanding pool of his own blood. Both eyes remained half open, not blinking. “He's dead,” she confirmed.

Sam opened the door and the visitors swiftly left the room.

Minutes after their departure from the nursing home, a staff member entered Calvin Beck's room and discovered the body.

“You asshole, you lost your temper, and now we've lost our only link back to that bomb,” said Carol to Rodney.

“He was fucking with us,” grumbled Rodney.

“He wasn't going to tell us anything more,” spoke up Gary. “I believe he was telling the truth.”

“If he's telling the truth, then our plans are fucked,” said Carol. “We'll never get that bomb.”

Sam reached across the table for a packet of strawberry jam for his toast. The four of them sat in a booth in a Denny's restaurant in Atlanta, eating breakfast and considering their next move.

To the average outsider, they looked no different than any other group of patrons enjoying a leisurely meal.

“I still think we could've beaten more out of him,” said Carol. “You didn't have to finish him so quickly.”

“Can I help it if he broke so easily? I only hit him a few times,” said Rodney.

“He was in his eighties, falling on the sidewalk could kill him,” said Gary, chewing on a piece of bacon. “What did you expect?”

“That bomb is out there and we have no one who can help us find it,” said Carol, scowling. “No one.”

Sam, who had been quiet, spoke up. “That's not quite true,” he said.

“Not true?” said Carol. “Then enlighten me, Sam. Who is going to show us the way to that bomb?”

“Yuri Kolstov,” replied Sam.

“The leader of those Soviet spies?” said Gary. “You heard Beck. He's dead. They're all dead.”

“Yes,” said Sam. “I believe that to be true.”

“Then how, exactly, is Yuri going to help us?”

“Yuri and his men may be dead, but they're not lost to us,” said Sam. “Think about it. They sought a weapon of mass destruction. They killed seven people. I know where to find them. It's destiny. They guaranteed themselves a one-way ticket to hell.”

The table went silent.

Gary broke out into a grin. He eyed the others with a growing nod. “Road trip!”

At O'Hare International Airport, Carol called home to let Jake know she was leaving for an urgent business trip in London regarding some international investments. “I'm not sure when I'll be home,” she told him. “Don't count on me for anything.”

“But, honey,” said Jake. “Thursday is Michael's birthday. We were going to plan a party for this weekend and invite my parents and his cousins.”

“For Christ's sake, Jake, he's 13 years old. He's too old for a birthday party,” she said. “Buy him a goddamn gift card and be done with it.”

He started to reply but she hung up on him.

Carol advanced to an ATM and finished securing funds for four round-trip tickets to Kiritimati. Illegal investments and insider trading over the past month had greatly padded her bank account to help pay for her three colleagues' immediate travel needs.

After boarding the flight, she sat in a row that included Sam, Gary and Rodney. A pleasant-looking business traveler sat next to her, facing the window.

She tried to ignore him, but he spoke up. He introduced himself as Jay, an account manager for a benefits consulting company.

“Where are you headed?” he asked, friendly.

Carol responded in a flat tone. “I'm going to hell.”

He didn't speak to her again for the rest of the trip.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jake and Emma met for coffee, searching for answers in their mutual state of bewilderment.

“I don't know her anymore,” said Jake. He stared into his cup, eyes lost. “She's not the same woman I married.”

Emma sat across from him. “That's how I could describe Gary. He's become a different person since we returned home from Kiritimati. Kelly says the same thing about Rodney. And Sam's not right either. He shaved his head, he doesn't talk to anyone anymore. Kelly thinks he might be behind that church fire, which is crazy on the surface, but not any stranger than the rest of this.”

“I don't get it,” said Jake. “I keep thinking things will stabilize and return to what they were. But it's getting worse, not better.”

“I have the name and number of a divorce attorney. I just haven't been able to bring myself to make the call.”

“As little as I see Carol these days, we might as well be divorced.”

“Kelly has a theory,” said Emma. “I didn't believe it at first. But now I'm so desperate, I'd believe anything.”

“What is it?”

“She thinks they were poisoned on that fishing trip. Something happened related to radioactive fallout from those old bomb tests.”

“Radiation?”

“Yes.”

“I don't think so,” said Jake. “Radiation produces physical effects, but this is all psychological. It's attitude, it's a change of behavior.”

“What if the radiation caused some kind of brain tumor?”

“So quickly?”

“I don't know.”

“I could ask Carol to see a doctor and get scanned, but she doesn't listen to me anymore.”

“We need to talk to Kelly,” said Emma. “She was going to research the history of nuclear testing on the island. She's convinced it has something to do with this.”

Jake shrugged. “At this stage, I'm willing to believe anything.”

Emma spent several days trying to reach Kelly without success. She tried her home and cell phones and texted persistently.

Finally, she grew alarmed and called Jake. His efforts to reach Kelly were equally unsuccessful. Rodney was nowhere to be found either.

They agreed to go to the house.

No one answered the ring of the bell.

Jake moved away from the door. He began looking in windows. Emma followed, walking tenderly with a hand on her hip. As Jake circled the home, he found a lower window well providing a glimpse into the basement.

He knelt down and strained to look inside. He discovered a dark, motionless outline of a person lying on the floor.

“Oh my God,” he said. “Is that her?”

At the hospital, Emma and Jake paced in the waiting room, anxious for updates.

Finally, a doctor appeared, accompanied by a police officer.

The doctor explained that Kelly was in a coma and had suffered multiple serious blows to the head. She was in critical condition.

Emma burst into tears.

After the doctor described Kelly's condition, he introduced them to police officer Frank Beltane. “We're investigating this as a potential home invasion,” said the officer. “I'd like to go someplace private where I could speak with the two of you.”

“Yes, of course,” said Jake.

The doctor excused himself and Jake and Emma accompanied Officer Beltane into a small, windowless conference room on another floor. They sat together at a rectangular table.

“Have they found Christina?” asked Emma.

“Christina's safe,” said Officer Beltane. “She's been staying with Mrs. Martinez's parents in downstate Illinois this whole time. A small farm town called Cody. Mrs. Martinez left the child with them a little over a week ago.”

“What about Rodney?” asked Jake.

“Rodney has been on a leave of absence from the force at his own request,” said Officer Beltane. “We have been unable to locate him, and we're quite worried. It's possible someone has targeted both of them, perhaps in retaliation.”

“Retaliation for what?” asked Emma.

“Officer Martinez is one of our finest policemen, ma'am,” said Beltane. “Unfortunately, that comes with a price. There are gang bangers, drug dealers, local mafia and other scum who would like to do him harm. He has been a major force in reducing crime in the city of Chicago. That doesn't make him very popular with the criminals.”

Emma and Jake looked at one another. Then Jake faced Officer Beltane.

“Officer, we believe it is possible that Mrs. Martinez was attacked by her husband.”

Beltane stared at him long and hard before saying, “Rodney?”

“Yes, sir. I have seen—we have seen a change in his behavior. I believe he is capable of this kind of—”

Beltane cut him off, face reddening. He rose from his chair. “Let me get this straight. You are accusing Rodney Martinez of this brutal attack? Do you know Rodney Martinez?”

“Yes, sir, I—”

“No, I don't think you do. But let me tell you something. I have known that man for 20 years. Rodney Martinez is a man of peace. He abhors violence and has dedicated his life to preventing it. He loves his wife more than anything in the world. He is one of the most honorable, most decorated officers we have on the force, ask anybody in the CPD. That man did not commit this crime. It's ludicrous.”

“Do you have proof he didn't do it?” asked Emma. “Tell me that. How can you know?”

Beltane looked back and forth between the two of them. Then he folded his arms across his chest. “This is very interesting to me. The two of you sailing this story… It's such an outrageous concoction that I can't help but think that maybe I should be suspicious of the two of you.”

“This is bullshit!” shouted Jake, starting to rise.

“Sit back down,” said Officer Beltane, forcefully. “I'm not done here. And neither are you.”