Murder on Capitol Hill (29 page)

“It’s a good risk… he’s over on the radio side at this time of night. The TV side is quiet. We can use a vacant editing room or production studio…”

Conegli, forced to be more discreet, had not heard them talk about leaving, so he was surprised when they suddenly stood and headed for the front door. He hated to give up his pizza, but duty called. He put enough money on the table to cover what he guessed would be his check, pushed through a maze of tables and got to his car just as Lydia and Christa hailed a passing cab.

As they headed for the sprawling facility that housed the radio and television operations of WCAP, Lydia asked Christa about what she was going to see.

“I couldn’t even begin to describe it to you… you’ll see for yourself… Lydia, in a way I may have misled you and I apologize for that. I guess I wanted to say anything that would get your attention. I needed an ally, I was scared… The tape doesn’t really prove Quentin was involved in the murders of Jimmye and Senator Caldwell, but I think it does provide pieces of the puzzle you’ve been trying to put together. I hope that’s enough…”

“Christa, if it does that, it’s a whole lot more than enough.”

The two women settled back and rode in silence. Christa told the driver not to go to the front door but to circle through a large employee parking lot until he got to a door at the rear of the building. “I have a key,” she said to Lydia. “I was supposed to turn in my keys but I kept this one. Still not quite able to let go…”

***

As the cab pulled up in front of an unmarked metal door, John Conegli came to a stop in the employee parking lot, quickly shut off his lights. He saw the two women get out of the cab and, as it drove away, watched Christa insert a key into the door’s lock, open it and lead Lydia through it.

He got out of his car, walked to the door and tried it. Solidly locked. He considered going to the front entrance but knew he’d never get through security. He returned to his car, started the engine and drove to a public telephone, where he placed a call to Francis Jewel at the Center for Inner Faith. He quickly told Jewel what had happened, listened to Jewel’s instructions, hung up and returned to the parking lot, where he shut off the engine, lit a cigar, and stared at the door.

Clarence had been home from the concert a half hour when Lydia called him to say she was at WCAP. She said she had no time to talk but that he should pick her up in about an hour.

He’d no sooner hung up when the phone rang again. This time it was Lydia’s researcher, Ginger Johnson. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but I was worried about Lydia.” And then she quickly told him about the phone call she’d gotten from Christa Jones and said she wondered whether Christa had gotten in touch with Lydia at the concert.

“Yes, she did. In fact Lydia left the concert to meet her. They’re at WCAP right now. Lydia is going to call me when she’s through.”

Ginger was silent for a moment. Then: “Do you think she’s okay with Miss Jones? I mean, she sounded so… upset when she called. Somehow I have this crazy feeling that things are about to blow up and I hate to think of Lydia being smack in the middle of it.”

Clarence didn’t tell her he had exactly the same sort of worries. What he did say was: “Maybe I
shouldn’t wait for Lydia’s call. Maybe I’ll drive out there now.”

“I’d love to come with you, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

“Why don’t I pick you up? You’re on my way to WCAP. Give me a half hour.”

He was immediately sorry he’d agreed to wait for Ginger… oh, come on, he told himself, you’ve been watching too many movies. He did a lousy job of convincing himself.

After Lydia finished talking to Clarence, Christa led her down a series of hallways until they reached a small dark studio in the basement of the WCAP building. The studio had been designed to handle taped interviews with celebrities and newsmakers, but received little use.

Christa snapped on a few lights, which made Lydia feel better. Two orange swivel chairs stood on a slightly raised platform in the middle of the studio. Three huge television cameras stood silently on their tripods, bizarre statues in the world of electronic communications. Lydia and Christa stepped over heavy black cables that curled across the floor like reptiles and went into a control room overlooking the studio. Christa stripped the brown paper from the package, exposing the reel of videotape. “I was going to use one of the editing rooms, like the one we were in when you screened Quentin’s interview with Senator Caldwell, but I think you might as well see what’s on this tape on the biggest screen possible. I can run it through the rear-screen projection system here. It’ll only take a few minutes to rack it up.”

Lydia watched closely as Christa deftly negotiated the array of electronic equipment in the control room. It was obvious that she took pride in having mastered it all. She gave Lydia a play-by-play of what she was doing… “We’re as well equipped as any station in the country. All two-inch equipment, but we’ll be converting to one-inch in a few months. Quentin is a gadget nut, he loves electronic equipment, his apartment is loaded with it. Everything here has total remote capability, too. It can all be run from slave units out in the studio…”

When everything was set Christa led Lydia back to the studio and motioned to her to sit in one of the swivel chairs. Lydia did, and Christa pointed to a rack of equipment mounted on a movable console that stood next to the chair. “That’s the remote panel,” she said. Lydia absently ran her fingers over the panel’s buttons, then returned her attention to Christa.

“I’ll run it from the control room,” Christa said. “It’s a little easier. Besides, I think you’d probably rather be alone while you watch it. There’s nothing for me to explain to you. The tape says it all. The only thing I’ll point out is that it contains material from two sources. One is eight-millimeter film that was taken by someone at the Center for Inner Faith. The other footage was a videotape interview Jimmye McNab did with Mark Adam Caldwell after the eight-millimeter film had been shot. You won’t have any trouble telling the two apart because the quality of the videotape is so superior to the film footage. I have to warn you, Lydia… what you’re about to see isn’t very pretty or pleasant.”

Lydia’s stomach was twisted into a knot. She realized she was about to learn something she wasn’t even sure she wanted to know. For a moment she had the urge to tell Christa not to run the tape. She wanted to get out of that studio and go home and seal herself off from everything that had happened since Senator Cale Caldwell’s murder. Of course, she didn’t. She’d come this far, she’d go all the way. She watched Christa return to the control room and sit behind a huge console. The lights in the studio were dimmed, and a large screen suspended from the ceiling came to life.

The screen was eight feet wide and six feet high. Two massive speakers, also suspended from the ceiling and flanking the screen, gave out beeps as a series of numbers counted down from ten to one. Lydia glanced up at the glass separating the studio from the control room. Christa’s face was lit by a glow from the control panel. The way the illumination came from below her chin, it turned her face into a sinister mask, reminding Lydia of when she was a child and would point a flashlight at her face from below to scare her friends.

Now the screen was filled with crude, shaky footage of the Center for Inner Faith’s main house. The person taking the film was obviously trying to establish the general location because a series of scenes of the grounds followed—quick short bursts of film that eventually ended up behind the main house.

The next scene was of at least a hundred white-robed cult members, male and female, who’d congregated along the bank of Occoquan Creek. Lydia noticed one man carrying a portable cassette tape
recorder. She guessed he wasn’t supposed to be in the film but apparently had walked a little too far ahead of the cameraman.

Up until this point the film had been silent. Now the voice of the cult members could be heard. Lydia leaned forward to better hear what was a chant… a long, sustained, rhythmic moan that grew louder as the camera and recorder neared.

Abruptly, the film footage ended and Jimmye McNab’s face filled the screen. It had been so long that Lydia had forgotten the incongruously angelic face of the woman… incongruous in terms of what she’d come to learn of her… It was a face, somebody had once said, that would look good in a bathing cap. Lydia tried to figure out where Jimmye was for the taping… it appeared to be a motel or hotel room. Jimmye, in a chair in front of a set of heavy green drapes, faced into the camera. “Hello, this is Jimmye McNab,” she said in her husky voice, also incongruous with the delicate, feminine face. “As some of you might know, I’ve been interested, in my role as investigative journalist, in the subject of brainwashing and mind control. That interest led me to write a book on the subject. I was obliged to research every possible aspect of the subject, including the use of manipulative techniques in so-called religious cults that have proliferated recently in our country. My research led me to the conclusion that individuals were, indeed, being controlled by the leaders of these organizations.

“Like any journalist, my personal involvement in a subject can only be as good as the contacts I’m able to establish. For this story I have been extremely fortunate.
I was brought up by a very wonderful and distinguished family headed by United States Senator Cale Caldwell. In that home were two young men I learned to call my brothers, Cale Caldwell, Jr., and Mark Adam Caldwell. With me today is one of those brothers, Mark Adam.”

The scene now widened to include Mark Adam, who sat in a similar chair on Jimmye’s right. They were close together. He wore his cult’s traditional white robe. His head was shaven, and his eyes had the same vacant haze that had upset Lydia when she’d visited him at the center.

Jimmye continued: “What you are about to see will undoubtedly shock you. It did me, so much so that I think I shall never get over it for as long as I live. But not only will you see this dreadful event with your own eyes, you will hear from its main participant exactly why it occurred and, more important, why he was involved in it.” She turned and looked directly at Mark Adam. “You are my brother, Mark, and I love you no matter what.” (She certainly did, Lydia thought.) Jimmye again looked directly into the camera. “Once more I must warn you that what you see will shock and anger you, but if brainwashing and its use by cults is ever to be understood, it will only be because such practices are exposed.”

The screen went black, then again lit up with crude eight-millimeter footage. Lydia focused intently on the screen. The camera was in the midst of the cult members gathered at the creek. It moved jerkily through the young men and women until reaching the edge of the water. Standing there were four young
men in white robes. They’d formed a box around a young woman who also wore a robe. She appeared to be no older than twenty. She had a sweet face. Her brown hair was closely cropped, like all the other females in the cult. Her hands were secured behind her back. She stared straight ahead, but in spite of an apparent calm and resolve on her face, her eyes testified to the fear she was also experiencing.

Jimmye now began to narrate the film off-camera… “One of the important ingredients in brainwashing is to strip away the individual’s sense of self, to deprive him of all roots, all links to the past and then to substitute new ideas and philosophies. Generally, that’s sufficient to keep members in line. Of course, it depends a great deal upon the person on the receiving end of the manipulation. My research has indicated that ultimately the capacity to be controlled is within the individual, and that those who in the first instance embrace fanatical cults have a predisposition to fall under such control. No one seems to know why one person is susceptible to such tampering and another isn’t. Perhaps it’s a combination of genetics, early patterning, parental influence. The important thing is that for those who do possess this heightened capacity to be controlled, the job is made very easy for those who have that as a goal.

“There are times, though, when someone will stray from the pattern expected of them. When that occurs, punishment helps to reinforce the control. What you are about to see is punishment in the extreme. It is not unlike the Arabic custom of severing a hand or a head in a public square and demanding
that everyone attend. An example made, and there is less likelihood that others will deviate from the precepts set down by the leaders.”

The girl’s face was caught in a close-up, and the combination of resignation and fear was now even more evident to Lydia. Jimmye’s words about punishment had brought Lydia to the edge of her chair. She was like someone appalled at the thought of seeing an impending disaster, yet not able to take her eyes from it. She glanced up at Christa, who sat motionless, her face empty of expression.

The four young men surrounding the girl moved closer until she was literally pressed between their bodies. One of them grabbed the neck of her robe and yanked at it. The crowd observing the event had become dead still. Now the chant rose up again from its midst, an eerie cacophony that put goose bumps on Lydia’s arms and neck. She watched as the young men stepped back and completed the act of disrobing the young girl. She now stood naked. Lydia felt outraged, sickened. Then Mark Adam Caldwell stepped into the frame and sharply struck the girl in the face. The blow knocked her to the ground. He pulled the girl to her feet by her hair and hit her again. And again. The cameraman stepped closer and caught the sickening action. The tape recorder picked up her cries that cut through the monotonous din of the chant.

Eventually Mark Adam stepped out of camera range. The girl appeared to be unconscious. She was on the ground, her legs askew, her head turned to one side. Blood trickled from her mouth.

“My God,” Lydia said.

Jimmye’s voice came through the speakers. “It was not the intention of those who ordered the punishment you have just seen that the victim die. But that is what happened on this day. For whatever supposed transgressions she had committed against the cult to whom she had dedicated her life, she was to be punished at the hand of a fellow cult member. It was to be an object lesson for others tempted to stray from their commitment. It did not work out that way.