Beyond belief (32 page)

“Exactly what I've been looking for.”

A
ny friend of Jesse's is a friend of mine. You
are
a friend, aren't you?” Janey Clary opened the steel-barred security door and motioned for Joe to enter. She was probably in her eighties, but her dark golden skin was still smooth. She spoke with a slight Creole accent.

“I like to think of Jesse as a friend,” Joe said as he walked into the small, musty house. “I'm trying to help him.”

She smiled. “You won't find him here, Mr. Bailey. You won't find anything here except a lonely old lady.”

“You can't be that lonely. I hear that you help a lot of people with your white magic.”

She made a raspberry sound. “People want reassurance, that's all. I just dress it up a little.”

“Like you did with Tonia Adams when she brought Jesse here?”

Janey sat in a large easy chair. “Oh, lordy … Poor woman thought he might be the son of Satan.” Janey
cackled. “Wouldn't surprise me if she was checking his scalp while he slept, looking for those three sixes!”

“Jesse showed you his powers?”

“Oh, yes. Such a sweet, sweet boy. All summer long he'd come a couple of times a week. I sure missed him when he went back home.”

Joe sat across from her. “You never met him before he started showing his powers?”

“Never. Only afterward, when his aunt wanted me to tell her that he wasn't the demon spawn. Which I did, gladly.”

“So what did you think of Jesse's powers?”

She grinned, flashing a set of perfect teeth that had to be false. “Verrrry interesting.”

Joe cocked his head. “You knew, didn't you?”

“Knew what?”

“You knew.”

She was still smiling. “I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Bailey.”

“Sure you do. I'm trying to help Jesse, and I hope that you will too. You knew he wasn't what he seemed to be, didn't you?”

She hesitated. “I don't want any trouble.”

“Ms. Clary, I'm not here to make trouble for you. This is about Jesse. Please, for his sake, be honest with me.”

“I haven't talked to anybody about this.”

“It's a good time to start. Please.”

She sat in silence, then nodded. “Of course I knew.”

“When?”

She shrugged. “Right away. I showed him what he
was doing wrong. He wouldn't have gotten very far otherwise.”

“Why didn't you tell his aunt?”

“Because that's not what she wanted to hear, and if there's one thing I've gotten good at in this job, it's telling people what they like to hear. Jesse didn't want to make his family a part of it. This was his game, and if he got caught, he didn't want any of them to get any of the blame.” She sighed. “I'm not sure how this is going to help you find him.”

“You never can tell. So you taught him the other tricks. The telepathic drawings, the spoon bending …”

“Are you sure I'm not going to get into trouble for this?”

“Positive.”

“Well, every time he came over, I taught him a new trick. It kept him coming, and I guess I liked the company. He was such a nice boy.”

“I was impressed with his ability to reproduce drawings. Magicians often use a confederate, but I don't think he had one.”

She shook her head. “He didn't need one.”

“I watched the tapes, and the camera was always on Jesse. I couldn't see the other people in the room, but Jesse was watching them very carefully.”

“That's the key, Mr. Bailey. You get more than fifteen or twenty people in a room and ask them to imagine drawing a simple shape, a few of ‘em are going to tell you what to draw whether they realize it or not.”

He smiled. “Did you teach him to read head and eye movements?”

“Ain't you the clever one? Yeah, if you tell a group of people to imagine drawing a circle, someone's head might move around, or their eyes may do a little loop-the-loop. If it's a triangle, you might see three sharp strokes of the chin or nose. It's not a sure thing, but the more people there are in the room thinking about drawing the shape, the better your chances are. And if you limit it to simple geometric shapes, well, how many simple shapes are there?”

“He was very good at it.”

“He wasn't enjoying it. Maybe he was at first, when he was entertaining his family, but the bigger it got, the more upset he became. And that was last summer. I can only imagine how it was for him these past few months.”

“Then why did he do it?”

“That uncle of his kept telling him how much money he could make. Jesse wanted to buy his mother a house and make it so she wouldn't have to work so hard. That's the only reason he did all this, I guarantee it. He's a good boy.”

“It turned out to be very dangerous for him.”

“He'll be all right.”

“How do you know?”

“Faith. It's one kind of magic I
do
believe in.”

Jesse paced around the room, pounding the padded walls. If he didn't get out of there soon, he was going to go crazy.

Roland Ness had kept him awake all night with his weird talk about the Millennial Prophets.
“You're the
Child of Light, Jesse. Our new prophet. Our guide to a new age of enlightenment.”

He wanted to scream at the old man:
I don't have any powers! Leave me alone!

But he didn't dare.

If they found out he was a faker, they might kill him. His tricks might be the only thing keeping him alive. What kind of test would they think up next?

He'd just wanted to help Mama. If he could've done that, he would have stopped doing those awful demonstrations.

He'd thought about telling the truth when Dr. Nelson was killed, but then he would never have gotten that house. He was going to tell only if the police arrested him.

Now he'd be lucky to stay alive.

The door opened, and Ness walked in with Myrna and Dunning. “Hello, Jesse,” Ness said. “I hope you've had time to think about what I told you.”

“What's to think about?”

“Your importance to all of us.”

“If I'm so important, why won't you listen to me? I want to go home.”

“I know you do, son, but there's a bigger picture to consider. We don't expect you to understand that right now, but you will.”

Jesse nodded at Myrna. “Why does she have to stay here? She didn't do anything to you.”

Myrna smiled. “Jesse, no one was forcing me to stay here. I'm a follower of the Millennial Prophets too.”

“You told me—”

“We told her to tell you that,” Dunning cut in. “We thought you might use your powers against us, so we gave you a friend you wouldn't hurt.”

Jesse looked at her in bewilderment. “You lied to me?”

Dunning continued before she could respond. “Charles volunteered to play the bad guy. It wasn't easy for him, because he cares for you, Jesse. It was a test—we wanted to give you someone to focus your anger against. We took every precaution, with the clothing, the padding in the room, everything. Considering what happened to Dr. Nelson, it was quite a risk for Charles.”

“Maybe it still is.” Jesse tried to sound threatening. “Maybe it's a risk for all of you.”

Ness recoiled slightly, but Dunning remained calm. “If you could have hurt any of us, you would have done it by now,” Dunning said. “You still need to harness your abilities, Jesse. We can help you with that.”

Dunning wasn't afraid of him, Jesse realized with despair.

Ness patted Jesse on the shoulder. “This isn't forever. It's just for now.”

Fear was no longer a weapon. He had to find another way to fight them.

He settled back on his cushions. “I'm having trouble breathing again.”

“Rest,” Ness said. “Treat this like an experiment. Concentrate and try to make yourself well. Myrna will stay with you.”

Jesse eyed her coldly. “No, thanks.”

Ness shrugged. “We'll be keeping an eye on you
from the booth. If there's anything you need, just call out.”

“I won't need anything.”

“The sooner you decide to work with us and open your heart, Jesse, the easier this will be.”

“Then it's not gonna be easy.”

Ness stood, and Dunning and Myrna followed his lead. “We'll talk after you've had some rest. You've had a lot of information thrown at you today.”

Ness, Dunning, and Myrna walked out of the room.

“You never should have taken him,” Dunning said as he and Ness walked down the long corridor outside the containment area.

Ness pursed his lips. “Someone could have hurt him, Dunning. People are terrified of the boy.”

“They're in awe of him.”

“All it would have taken is one insane person.” Ness suddenly had a pained expression.

“You mean Lyles. He didn't hurt Jesse,” Dunning said. “The only one he hurt was you.”

“Expunging him was the hardest decision I ever had to make.”

“It was the right decision. He's dangerous. Psychotic.”

“That's exactly why I had to bring Jesse in.”

Dunning chose his words carefully. “But out there in the world, Jesse is an ambassador for our cause. Maybe that's how he will lead us into the new era, instead of being poked and prodded in this bunker of yours.”

“You're questioning my leadership?”

Dunning lowered his eyes. “No, Vicar, I am not. But you must admit—”

“What?”

“There's been a surge of interest in the Millennial Prophets since Jesse stepped forward. The news media was starting to pick up on it, and Alessandro's hundred-year-old writings suddenly have meaning for people all over the world. Isn't that what we wanted? If it ever got out that we kidnapped him—”

“It won't get out.”

“Your thugs killed a police officer, and you're pretty sure Lyles murdered the two men you sent after him. Is this what the Millennial Prophets are really about?”

“I know you disagree with my decision, but you must learn to trust me. I know what I'm doing.”

Dunning sighed. “For all of our sakes, I certainly hope so.”

Joe leaned into the doorway with his portable phone, trying to escape the sounds of the Pryor Street traffic behind him.

Suzanne answered. “Hello?”

“It's me. Joe.”

“It's a good thing I have a sense of my own worth. You sure rushed out of here in a hurry this morning.”

“I know. Sorry about that. The case is starting to break.”

A car honked behind him.

“Where are you?”

“In front of the Fulton County Government Center. Listen, are you free tonight?”

“I can be.”

“I need your help with something.”

“What?”

“I'll give you a call in a little while to explain, okay?”

“That's all you're going to tell me? I'm supposed to rearrange my evening for that?”

“It'll be worth it. I promise.”

Lyles squinted at the car in front of him as it turned off West Paces Ferry Road onto Piedmont. One of the keys to surveillance was knowing just how much one could get away with. For some people, it might mean hanging back a quarter mile and ripping off another car each time the guy stopped someplace. Charles, however, was clueless. Idiot. Anyone who'd just murdered a man and participated in a high-profile kidnapping should have been looking over his shoulder every moment of every day.

Lyles looked at the man's lightbulb-shaped head. He'd love to shatter the bastard's skull all over the front windshield.

Patience.

There would be a time for that later.

Bertram and Irene Setzer had tried to teach him the virtue of patience, but by that time he'd already lost respect for them. The complacent fools. Under their leadership, the Millennial Prophet movement in Great Britain had almost collapsed. He'd been in the
U.S. for several months, serving Vicar Roland Ness, when Bertram and Irene had come to Atlanta for a summit meeting to discuss Jesse Randall. Millennial Prophet leaders from all over the world had come for the event, and only the Setzers refused to believe that Jesse Randall was the Child of Light. There were some similarities between Jesse and the prophecies of Alessandro, they admitted, but that was merely a coincidence.

The fools were afraid of the truth, and by then he'd had enough of their ignorance. He killed them on their way to the airport.

He thought Ness would have been happy to see them removed so cleanly, but instead he was enraged. He refused to listen to reason and excommunicated him from the sect. The old man probably would have had him arrested if it wouldn't have brought the secretive Millennial Prophets under such intense scrutiny.

That stupid bastard.

Lyles accelerated to keep Charles in sight. They were now near Ansley Mall, a large strip center, and traffic was thinning out.

The guy suddenly swerved into the parking lot of a four-story office building. Lyles drove past. He couldn't risk letting the guy see him.

He turned into a convenience store lot, parked, and ran back toward the building just in time to see the bearded man walking through the main entrance.

What was in there? Surely not Jesse; he couldn't be so lucky.

Lyles dashed to the entrance and peered inside. A set of elevator doors slid shut. He entered the lobby.
There was something instantly familiar about it even though he was sure he had never been there before. It was in the architecture, the decoration, and even the gold and white rectangular ashtrays near the doors.