Under the Beetle's Cellar Page 22
Holihan flipped the switches and the phone call played again.
Molly watched Jake’s face. When it came to the part about Granny Duck, his jaw tightened and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed. “Oh, Christ.” When it was over, he put his long fingers to his forehead as if shading his eyes from some glare.
Patrick Lattimore said, “We know Walter Demming has no living grandparents, or parents. So who is Granny Duck?”
Jake opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. He seemed to have no breath to propel the words.
“Could we get you a glass of water or coffee, Mr. Alesky?”
“Yes. Coffee black. Thanks.”
Holihan left the room, sliding the door shut behind him.
Jake wheeled his chair to the wall with the compound diagram and studied it. Then he licked his lips and said, “Is he being held … underground?”
The five people in the room all came to attention, like dogs on point.
“Why do you ask?” Lattimore said evenly.
“Granny Duc, that’s D-u-c. Vietnamese. She survived by staying underground. In 1968. Trang Loi, this village on the Batangan Peninsula.”
“Ow,” said Lattimore, “bad-luck place.”
“Real bad,” Jake agreed. “And this village was the worst, the province headquarters of VC activities. A snake pit. Weapons and supplies hidden in hootches and tunnels, VC behind every tree, booby traps everywhere.” He stopped, clearly still struggling to get his breathing under control.
Everyone was silent, waiting for him to go on.
He licked his lips again. “This old woman, this Granny Duc—she was the only person to survive the destruction of Trang Loi. A survivor. The ultimate survivor.”
Holihan returned with a Styrofoam cup. He handed it to Jake.
“Thanks.” Jake took a sip. “Granny Duc hid underground, in one of the tunnels under the village. Other people hid down there, too, but they came out too soon. After the main destruction, but while we were still … in the killing mode. You know?” He looked around the room.
“Oh, yes,” Lattimore said, “I know. I did a tour in ’69.” The two men studied one another. Molly felt the flow of empathy passing between them.
Jake went on: “She didn’t come out until two days after. And we … let her live. By then we’d had enough. I think Walter is sending you a message. He’ll stay underground through whatever happens. I think he wants you to destroy the compound, and he’ll keep the children out of the way for as long as it takes.”
Lattimore started to pace the room. He stopped next to Jake in front of the diagram of the Jezreel compound. “I wish he could have told us exactly where he is. Although such precision may be a bit much to expect of someone in such adverse circumstances.” He put his finger on the main building. “Mr. Alesky, the tunnel that this Granny Duc hid in—it was underneath the village?”
“Yes. The entrance was in the floor of one of the hootches, hidden under a big storage bin.”
Molly’s brain was racing. She hadn’t been asked and she was just a visitor, but she had a hunch so overpowering she couldn’t stop herself. “I think they’re under the barn,” she said, walking over to look closer at the diagram. “Because it’s consecrated ground. He’s purifying them. Like the babies. For fifty days.”
Lattimore’s finger moved slowly to the left and settled on the outline of the barn. “If you’re right, we could increase our chances of getting them out alive by maybe ten percent. We’d target the barn and neutralize everyone there first.” He pressed down on the barn, turning his index finger as though he were grinding a bug. “What do you think, Andrew?”
Andrew Stein closed his eyes and let his head fall first to one shoulder, then the other, to loosen his neck. “I’m inclined to agree with Miss Cates. If they’re underground, and I think they are, it’s the barn. Here’s why. First, a practical reason: The Jezreelites can get there from the house without being seen because of that breezeway structure, so they’ve been able to take them food without our surveillance picking it up. But mainly it’s the associations I get from the poem. ‘Under the beetle’s cellar’ makes me think of barns. You know—dung beetles, barns, animals live there and make dung. ‘Under the clover’s root’ suggests root cellars, storage, and I associate both cellars and barns with storage, and we know there is no cellar in the compound, and the entrance to the tunnel in Trang Loi being under a storage bin—well, it just feels right. Also, ‘Under the light, yet under’ suggests two layers of being underneath something, and barns are dark inside. To be buried under a barn roof is like two layers of darkness. Anyway, it’s the largest structure in the compound and the only one likely to have a dirt floor.”
Molly looked at him with awe. That was exactly how she felt about it, but she’d been reluctant to put anything so sketchy and speculative into words. She began to see why Stein might be a superb hostage negotiator. He was fluent in feelings, intuitive, and willing to stand behind his intuition.
“Well,” Lattimore said, “the English major speaks.”
Grady, slouching against the wall, looking every bit the outsider he was, spoke. “I agree with Andrew. But even if it’s true that they are in some underground cell in that barn, the strike force can’t get across that open area fast enough to stop a determined Samuel Mordecai from getting there first and killing the hostages. Mrs. Grimes was headed toward that problem when she was so rudely interrupted.”
“Can’t you snipe him?” Jake asked.
Stein said, “Mr. Alesky, there is nothing we would like better. But our sharpshooters have had their rifles aimed at the front door and his bedroom window for six weeks and he has yet to walk into our cross hairs. Not once. The cowardly bastard.” For the first time, Molly heard anger in his voice.
“Even without Annette Grimes’s information,” Grady said, “it was clear that we’d have an easier time of it if we took him out. All the intelligence coming in—the Cult Watchers report, and the interviews with the few ex-members who will talk—they all agree that there’s no chain of command in there. Mordecai’s the commander in chief of what he calls his destroyer angels, the militia he’s got in there, and all the rest are just privates. He dictates what they’ll eat and when, who sleeps with who, who does what work and how long.” And who will live and who must die, Molly thought. “With Mordecai gone,” Grady continued, “the Jezreelites would fall to pieces.”
“Well, gentlemen, we can’t snipe him if we can’t see him,” Lattimore snapped.
“A real shame,” Stein said. “I sure wish we could figure a way to take him out.” He glanced at Lattimore with an intensity that made Molly wonder what the shared secret was.
“So are we giving up on negotiating?” Curtis asked.
“I hate like hell to give up after forty-eight days of this,” Lattimore said. “Until Miss Cates played that tape of Mrs. Grimes, I really thought we could negotiate those kids home to bed. But it’s over. We need to get Blumberg in here now with his Ninja gear and flash-bangs. It’s time to unleash them.”
Jake had been listening intently. He said, “I’d like to add this: Walter knows what’s going on in there better than we do. He hates violence. If he’s assuming you’ll attack, inviting you to, it’s because he knows negotiation won’t work.”
Lattimore nodded. “Agents Stein, Curtis, Holihan, and Lieutenant Traynor, I am giving you a locker-room talk. This Walter Demming is a real stand-up guy. He’s just a civilian, a bus driver, for Christ’s sake. If he can send secret messages while he’s under the gun, and taking care of eleven children, we handpicked, elite agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—and the Austin PD—ought to be able to come up with a plan to oblige the man. And not just some testosterone-surge, Geronimo attack that’ll get him and the kids gloriously killed, but something elegant and controlled to give them the best chance possible under these tough odds.” He looked around the room, deliberately engaging each pair of eyes. “And we’ve got to have that plan today.”
Curtis smiled. He’d been working away steadily at the computer. “Yes, sir. She’s a real estate broker who owns her own company. She drives a silver Lexus, ’94 model. She wears contact lenses. She’s five nine, a hundred eighty-five pounds, fifty-three years old. The house she and her husband own in Rob Roy is on the market for one million eight. Last year they paid taxes on it of thirty-six thousand. Perfect credit rating. I have four phone numbers for her: home, office, digital pager, car. Shall we try her?”
“Miss Cates,” Lattimore said, “you still with us here? You’ve had a hard morning and you’re a volunteer. You can drop out anytime you say so. But Lieutenant Traynor seems to think you’re good at this and since you’ve taken it this far I’m willing to let you stay with it. If you want.”
“Yes. I’d like to try.”
“There is a condition: Agent Holihan goes with you.”
“Can’t it be Lieutenant Traynor?” Molly asked.
“No. I need him here. He’s our reality check.”
Molly was bone-weary. And she wanted to get Grady alone so they could talk all this over. But, on the other hand, she wasn’t ready to let this go. She wanted to follow the strand to the very end, as far as she could take it. Her drive for closure outweighed everything else. And she hated to delegate. “Okay.”
“Ring her, Curtis.”
Nancy Saint Claire wasn’t at her home or office phone, but she answered the first ring on her car phone.
“This is Molly Cates, Mrs. Saint Claire. I’m a writer for Lone Star Monthly magazine, and I have something I need to talk to you about. It’s urgent. May I come see you right now?”
“What is this about?”
“I can’t talk about it over the phone. Wherever you’re headed, let me come meet you there.”
“Well, I’m on my way to my office. You could come there, I guess. I’ve got a client with me, but we’ll be finished in a few minutes.”
She gave Molly the address in Northwest Hills and they agreed to meet in forty-five minutes.
Lattimore said, “If you can pull this off, Miss Cates, I’ll hire you on.”
Molly shook her head. “I hear you have to do push-ups on your fingertips. That’s not in any job description of mine.”
“Good luck with this,” he said. “It may not be going anywhere we want to go at this point, but see what you can get.”
As Molly and Bryan Holihan were leaving, Lattimore said, “Mr. Alesky, may I impose on your goodwill some more? We’d like to keep you here in case of more communications that relate to this Granny Duc business. And I’d like to sit with you and go over that incident in more detail, if you will.”
Jake nodded, his face grim.
Nancy Saint Claire was a large, carefully groomed woman wearing a gorgeous suit of fuchsia silk. Her gold necklace, earrings, and watch were significant, chunky, and 18 karat. Her office overflowed with the artifacts of a long, successful career: plaques testifying to millions of dollars of sales, awards, photographs with celebrities. She was sitting behind a cluttered desk.
Molly introduced herself and Bryan Holihan.
The realtor took the ID badge Bryan held out to her and studied it. “Well, this looks like the real thing. Special Agent Holihan from the FBI?” She laughed. “What’s going on? I bet it’s Mr. Withers, isn’t it?”
Bryan took his badge back and slid it into his pocket. “No. Who’s Mr. Withers?”
She waved a plump hand with long, perfect nails. “Never mind. A joke. Sit down, both of you.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got twenty minutes before I have to leave for an appointment.”
“Mrs. Saint Claire,” Bryan intoned, leaning forward, “this is important government business, and you will—”
“Agent Holihan,” Molly said, “this is woman talk. Sit back please for a minute. Thank you for seeing us, Mrs. Saint Claire. This is short notice and it’s going to be the strangest request you’ve had in a long while.”
“Don’t be so sure. Just last week I had a client, a retired executive who specifically requested a million-dollar house within viewing distance of a Catholic girls’ school. And he had no children.” She laughed heartily. “That’s Mr. Withers. I refused to do business with him; it’s nice to be in a position to turn away million-dollar voyeurs.”
Molly smiled. “I work for Lone Star Monthly, but I’m not working now, and I’m not planning to write about this. There’s very little time, so I’ll get right to it. A man who was adopted as a baby back in 1962 is looking for his birth mother. There is good reason to think she’s a Pi Alpha Omega who was in summer school in 1962. You were there and you were a sorority officer. Were you aware of any pregnancies among your members that summer?”
She sat blank-faced for several seconds. Then she picked up the phone and pressed two buttons. “Rachel, would you bring us some coffee? And a few of those low-fat cookies, Snackwells, the ones in the red tin.”
She put the phone down and smiled at them. “That is the damnedest request. I’ve worried about the government interfering in our lives, but since when is getting pregnant an FBI matter?”
“This has to do with the hostage situation out in Jezreel, Mrs. Saint Claire. Agent Holihan is a member of the Hostage Response Team that’s come to town to try to get those children out safely.”
Nancy Saint Claire’s smile faded. “Really?”
“Yes. We can’t tell you any more than that, but this is extremely important, a matter of life and death.”
“Whose life and death?”
“The hostages.”
“This is crazy. How would some pregnancy—alleged pregnancy—thirty years ago affect the lives of those poor children? I can’t see any possible connection.”
“It is crazy,” Molly said. “The real story is crazier than anything you could imagine, but we urgently need to know whatever you know. Please tell us.”
Nancy Saint Claire was frowning. “The problem is, it’s a matter of personal loyalties, and for me those have always outweighed any sense I have of public responsibility. I believe in the sacredness of keeping a secret”—she raised the palms of both hands—“assuming I had one.”
“I agree with you,” Molly said, “in general. But in this case, the interest of those twelve hostages at Jezreel overrides your personal loyalties. Mrs. Saint Claire, keeping secrets is a sacred responsibility. But I have just talked with Thelma Bassett, the mother of one of those children. This information could lead to something that might help her.”
“Lots of coulds and mights here.”
The door opened and a tray with coffee and some squarish chocolate cookies appeared.
“I forgot to ask if you wanted coffee. Well, there it is. And I recommend the cookies—zero calories from fat and pretty good in spite of it.”
Bryan took one and popped it into his mouth whole.
Molly took one and nibbled on it. It tasted like all its calories came from hay.
They sat in silence while Nancy Saint Claire ate two cookies and sipped her coffee. “Back then,” she said, “it was a shameful secret if you got pregnant out of wedlock, and I’m afraid I still see it like that. You’re younger, so you may not—”
“Not much younger,” Molly said, “and I remember it like that, too.” Molly remembered all too well the panic surrounding her own unmarried pregnancy at nineteen and how telling her Aunt Harriet about it felt like her own personal end of the world.
Nancy Saint Claire set her coffee down. Suddenly a light seemed to go on behind her eyes. “Nineteen sixty-two?” she said, leaning across her desk. “Nineteen sixty-two—a baby born then would be thirty-three. Samuel Mordecai is thirty-three. But was he adopted?”
The woman was quick; Molly was impressed. “When this is all over, I’ll come tell you what I can. Now you tell me. Tomorrow is the last day f
or those children. Please tell me what you know.”
Nancy Saint Claire exclaimed softly, “I should have my head examined. I don’t know for absolute sure, but that summer—it was after my junior year—two sophomores who had been living in the house—they were roommates—left right after summer school started, and got an apartment. It was unusual at that time. And they’d paid up for the summer and it was nonrefundable. The scuttlebutt was that one of them was PG, as we used to say in those coy days, but they didn’t show up at any Pi Alph functions and I never ran into them that summer, so I don’t know which one. But it may be that the rumor was false—that happens, you know.”
Molly got out her list. “What were their names?”
Nancy Saint Claire paused and then let out a long breath. “Let me see your list.”
Molly handed it to her. She scanned the page, then took a pencil and made two check marks. She slid the paper back to Molly. “I hope I’m not going to regret this.”
Molly read off the checked names. “Sandy Loeffler and Gretchen Staples.”
“Yes.”
“Which one is more likely to have been pregnant that summer?”
“Oh, come, Miss Cates. That’s impossible. It can happen to anyone. You know that.”
Molly smiled. “Yes, I do. But you have no recollection of a thickening waist or someone throwing up at breakfast?”
“Afraid not. I was immersed in my own romance that summer. Too busy trying not to get pregnant myself to notice much. I needn’t have worried so much, as it turned out, since I never did get pregnant, ever, even with fertility drugs and all manner of indignities.”
Molly got out her Pi Alpha Omega directory and looked up Sandy Loeffler, now, according to the directory, Sandy Loeffler Hendrick. “According to this, Sandy’s in San Antonio. Have you had any contact with her?”
“No. I don’t believe she was at the reunion last year.”
Molly looked up Gretchen Staples, who still carried that name. “How about Gretchen, who lives in Santa Fe now?”
“She was at the reunion. She paints, or has an art gallery, or something related to art. I spoke to her briefly. That’s all I know.”