Under the Beetle's Cellar Read online

  “Could you describe for me what they look like, or rather, what they looked like back then?”

  “Let’s see. Gretchen was a big girl, like me, full face, beautiful skin, glossy long black hair. Healthy-looking.”

  “What color eyes?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

  “What were her teeth like?”

  She thought for a few seconds. “A little snaggly, I think.”

  “Did her hair have any natural curl?”

  “This is about Samuel Mordecai,” the woman said excitedly. “No. Gretchen’s hair was straight as a board. We were all jealous of it.”

  “What about Sandy?” Molly asked.

  Nancy’s cheeks flushed. “Curly hair, almost kinky. She used to straighten it. Dark blond, with highlights. She was very slim and fit, not an ounce of fat on her anywhere. Worked out even back then, when no one did it. Blue-gray eyes. Fine features.”

  “What about her teeth?”

  “Perfect. Without orthodontia, I think. A natural beauty, Sandy. I’d like to see what she looks like now.”

  “Would you have any pictures?”

  Nancy shook her head. “My yearbook got lost in one of our many moves.”

  Molly stood up and reached over the desk to take her hand. “Thank you. Thank you. It was a difficult decision. I’m sorry to put you in that moral quandary.”

  “I hope to hell this is not going to hurt those girls.”

  “I’ll do my best to see that it doesn’t,” Molly promised.

  When they got back to the car, Bryan Holihan complained that Molly hadn’t given him time to establish his line of questioning before leaping in. Molly explained that it wasn’t the questions; it was his tone. Then he objected to the dog riding in the back seat, saying he was allergic to animal dander and it was making his nose stuffy. Molly told him to open the windows.

  While they sat in the parking lot, Holihan radioed the names and addresses back to Curtis at the command post. After a brief discussion about how to proceed, Lattimore decided that Molly and Bryan would drive to San Antonio right away to talk to Sandy Loeffler Hendrick. At the same time they made contact with her, an agent in Santa Fe would contact Gretchen Staples. That way the women couldn’t warn one another or compare notes.

  Bryan complained again about the dog activating his dander allergies. “Open the windows,” Lattimore told him. Molly suppressed a grin.

  The hour and fifteen minutes on the road to San Antonio was spent talking to the command post. Curtis did his computer magic. Sandy Hendrick was five feet six inches tall, one hundred fifteen pounds, owned a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee and a 1993 Lexus ES 300, was married to an attorney, had two daughters, now grown and not living at home, owned with her husband a house in Alamo Heights, on which the taxes last year were $12,000. She also had a record: five arrests and one conviction for DWI in the past ten years. Her license had been revoked for a year in 1990.

  They stopped once, near New Braunfels, to walk Copper and pick up some food at McDonald’s. Holihan had two Big Macs and two orders of fries. Molly had a chicken filet sandwich and was sorry within minutes.

  As they entered San Antonio city limits, the radio crackled. It was Lattimore.

  “Bad news,” he said. “Real bad. Annette Grimes turned up—dead. So sorry, Molly.”

  Molly’s stomach lurched. She’d been expecting this. “How?”

  “Her throat was slit. She was hanging upside down, naked, in an empty storage unit at this place over on Burnet Road. They didn’t even close the door, so someone walking by saw her in there.”

  “Another blood statue,” Molly said.

  “Lieutenant Traynor is at the scene now. The MO is identical to the Asquith killing. When we finish with you, Austin PD wants you back. First thing in the morning, if that’s all right.”

  “I don’t have anything more to tell them.”

  “Molly, I don’t want to panic you, but Traynor says it looks like Annette was tortured some before she died. That means she probably told them what she told you. These so-called Sword Hand of God are on the move.”

  Molly didn’t respond. The chicken sandwich she’d just eaten felt like it was coming back to life in her stomach, feathers and all. In this business it was safer not to chance eating. She was wondering how wide the Sword Hand of God were casting their net for blood statues.

  “Mr. Lattimore, I’m worried about Sister Adeline Dodgin in Waco. She’s the one who put me on to Gerald Asquith and the Rapture of Mordecai business. I don’t want her to end up a blood statue, too.”

  “We’ve had one of our local agents watching Ms. Dodgin since you told me about her. Holihan, you stay close to Miss Cates. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

  “Tell her that, sir,” Holihan said.

  “Miss Cates, if you give Holihan a hard time, I’ll fire you.”

  Molly turned around to look at the dog, who was standing on the back seat hanging his head out the open window. She reached back and patted his lean rump. “Copper, I don’t believe I’ve thanked you.”

  The dog pulled his head in and looked at her.

  “That’s right,” she said. “I’m saying thank you.”

  Holihan sneezed.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  “There are no atheists in the foxholes.”

  WILLIAM THOMAS CUMMINGS (FIELD SERMON, BATAAN, 1942)

  “He finally did it. Old Jacksonville finally did it. He scraped through that second bar. Now there was a big enough hole for him to squeeze out. Of course, it helped that he was much thinner after nothing but water for three days. It felt so good to stand up straight and spread his wings. But he didn’t have time to really enjoy it because it was starting to get light out. And he heard something that really scared him. It was a rooster crowing. Now you guys remember that—”

  Walter fell silent. Josh was having a convulsive wheezing episode and most of the kids weren’t really listening anyway. Kim and Lucy were whispering and Bucky was talking to his Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. Philip was sitting up straight with his hands covering his face. The others had seemed distant and preoccupied since his phone call to the outside world this morning. Now it was bedtime, and he was exhausted. He had hoped he might distract them with the story, get them to stop grilling him, stop trying to catch him in evasions.

  They had wanted to hear everything about his ten minutes aboveground, every detail. He’d been talking about it all day, telling and retelling it, and still they wanted more. It was particularly difficult to keep it consistent since he had concealed some parts of it in his first version. Now he understood why cops interrogated suspects by making them keep repeating their original stories. It was difficult to lie consistently, even about ten lousy minutes, and even to little kids. They had already caught him in one lie—the one about how he’d gotten the head wound that was still oozing blood hours later. They didn’t buy his original story of tripping and hitting his head on the corner of a file cabinet. And they were suspicious of the amended version, that Martin hit him because he hadn’t moved fast enough.

  Josh leaned over into his emergency breathing posture and gasped.

  Quickly Walter got the towel from where it was drying over the steering wheel. He ran water from the thermos onto it, until it was soaked through. Then he took it to Josh. Kim had moved back to sit with him. She was rubbing the back of his neck.

  Walter handed Kim the towel. She folded it, then rolled it up and handed it to Josh. He held the sopping towel over his eyes and let the drips roll down his face. It was more like some magic ritual than anything scientific, but it seemed to ease the boy’s symptoms slightly.

  When the gasping died down, Kim said, “Were they there, where the guy talking on the phone was? The FBI guy.”

  “Your parents? I don’t know, Kim, but if they weren’t right there, I’m sure they got the messages to them right away. They certainly have the messages by now. They know you’re all okay.”


  “What’s it like inside the house?” Conrad asked. “Is that where Martin and Mr. Mordecai live?”

  “Well, you guys remember what the barn looks like, don’t you? Remember the first day we walked through the double doors. It’s big inside and pretty dark. No windows. The floor is dirt and at one end there are bales of hay and sacks and boxes stacked up. Then there’s this wooden sort of hallway that goes from the barn to the house, so you don’t have to go outside.”

  “I didn’t see that when we came in,” Conrad objected.

  “I did,” Hector said.

  “Me, too,” Sue Ellen said.

  “The house is big,” Walter said, “more like a hotel, but kind of run-down and not well built. Needs painting, I think, but it was hard to see because they have sheets and blankets tacked up over all the windows. And they don’t have many lights on. I told you that, didn’t I? I don’t know whether Martin and Mr. Mordecai live there or not. But there are other people there, because I saw a bunch of them, maybe twenty, all gathered in the center room. The phone’s in a little room that looks like an office. That’s where they took me, and they had me sit down at the desk.”

  “Was that when Martin hit you in the head with his gun?” Hector asked, his eyebrows raised in suspicion.

  “No. It was later. On my way out.”

  “Did they point guns at you the whole time?” Hector asked. “Were there just the two of them?”

  “Just the two of them—Martin and the bald guy I told you about—until Mr. Mordecai came in. Then there were three. Yes, they pointed guns at me the whole time.” That was true, but he didn’t tell them that it wouldn’t have mattered whether they had pointed guns at him or not. He would still have done exactly as they ordered him. Martin had warned him while they were still in the barn that if he said or did anything unauthorized, anything they didn’t like, they’d pull one of the kids up and shoot him in the head. So guns weren’t necessary, but Martin and the other man Walter remembered from the first morning had stood behind him with their pistols aimed at his head. Just a few inches away. The whole time.

  “Say it again, what the FBI guy said,” Conrad demanded.

  “He said his name was Andrew Stein, the same man I talked to the time before. He said our safety was the most important thing to them and that they hadn’t forgotten us and they were working around the clock to get us out safe. They particularly wanted to know how you were, Josh, because of your asthma. So they are thinking about all of us and doing everything they can. I was real encouraged. There must be some progress, since they let me talk.”

  “But why don’t they do something?” Sandra said. “It’s been so long.”

  “Will they come for us?” Kim asked.

  “I think so,” Walter said. “I’m very encouraged. I’m sure they’re working on a plan to get us out. Maybe it will be trading something or paying them something to let us go. But I think this is what’s going to happen: The FBI and the police will come in and rescue us. And if they have to do it that way, there will be a fight, lots of noise and some shooting probably. You know that. So we want to practice our emergency plan so we’re ready. We want to make it as easy for them as we can. And that means staying out of the way and letting them do their work.”

  “What kind of guns do they have up there?” Hector asked.

  “Well, I didn’t get a chance to study them, Hector. But they have lots of rifles and they have gas masks. I told you that. So they must think there’s a chance of tear gas being used. That means we have to add a step to our drill. Just in case we get some gas drifting down here. We are all going to take our shirts off and soak them in water and wrap them around our heads. Sort of like Josh does.”

  What he didn’t want to tell them was that the house was an armory, a battle station with enough automatic weapons, ammunition, grenades, and gas masks to hold off an army. Mordecai’s people had stacked bales of hay under all the windows. Furniture and sandbags were heaped against the front door, and men in fatigues knelt at the windows and paced the halls carrying AK-47s and belts of ammunition. Walter wanted the kids to expect a firefight, so they’d be ready, but he didn’t want to overwhelm them with the details.

  But it wasn’t the weapons and hay bales and gas masks that had most upset him. What had nearly caused him to go berserk was the inhalers. When he was herded into the room with the telephone, they caught his eye immediately—four shiny yellow plastic inhalers on top of a stack of newspapers on the file cabinets. They were identical to Josh’s inhaler and bore similar-looking white-and-blue prescription labels. His heart leapt. “Are those for Josh?” he’d blurted out.

  Martin pressed the gun to his temple. “Sit down. We don’t use drugs here, especially during purification. Those aren’t for no one.”

  “But they look—”

  “Silence. You came here to do something. Let’s do it,” Martin said. “You’re here to talk on this phone for one minute. The Prophet Mordecai is on his way. He wants to hear this.”

  Walter sat on the chair. Martin and the other man stood behind him with their guns inches from his head. Walter sat motionless, but his eyes kept darting back to the inhalers. They attracted him powerfully, excited him. They were bright yellow, like sunshine, glowing with life and health, full of hope; if he could get them, they would restore breath to Josh. He wanted those inhalers as he’d never wanted anything in his life. He wanted them with such an intensity, he felt he could make them levitate and move through the air, into his hand, into his pocket. He tried to read the name on the labels but it was too far for him without his glasses. And it didn’t matter. He knew they were for Josh. And he knew what must have happened. The negotiators had sent them in with the newspapers. No doubt Josh’s parents had been howling about it for forty-eight days, and the negotiators had gotten tired of begging Mordecai and being turned down, so they had just sent them in.

  He pulled his gaze away from them because Samuel Mordecai had entered the room and shut the door. Martin and the other Hearth Jezreelite stood straighter and stiffer. This morning Mordecai was clean-shaven and his hair looked damp and he smelled clean, as though he’d just come out of the shower. It made Walter long to put his sore, filthy body under a stream of hot water.

  Mordecai leaned down and picked up the phone in front of Walter. “Stein?” he said. “Here he is. You’ve got one minute.”

  Walter read the messages at the speed he’d practiced, in a monotone, trying to make them all sound alike, innocuous and trivial. But his hands had been shaking so hard he had to lay the sheet on the desk to read it.

  After the call, Martin had jabbed the gun into his neck and told him to stand up. Walter turned his eyes to Samuel Mordecai, who for all his insane ravings and cold indifference seemed a better bet for compassion than Martin. In forty-eight days of being their caretaker, Martin had not given them a single kind word or glance and he had not brought them even one thing they had asked for to make their lives less miserable—no hot water or aspirin, no paper or pencils, no soap or shampoo, no flashlights, no batteries.

  So he looked to Samuel Mordecai. “Prophet Mordecai,” he said, using for the first time the term of address the man preferred. He did it because he wanted the inhalers and because he had no shame left. “Prophet Mordecai, please. Let me take those inhalers to Josh.”

  Mordecai turned to Walter. He smiled his dimpled movie-star smile. “Still hung up on earthly inconveniences, Mr. Bus Driver? You are the sort of man who in the middle of the great battle of Armageddon will be fussing over dirty laundry.”

  “But it won’t hurt anything,” Walter persisted, “and it will calm everyone down. The kids get really upset and hard to manage when Josh gets sick.” Samuel Mordecai’s smile stayed fixed. Walter pulled out all the stops. “The end is coming, I know. It will be easier for all of us if you just let me take those inhalers”—he pointed at them sitting on top of the cabinets—“back to the bus.”

  Mordecai glanced at the inhalers. Then he looked over
Walter’s shoulder at Martin. He gave a nod.

  Walter’s heart hammered. He was going to allow it.

  That’s when Martin slammed the gun barrel into the back of his head. Walter saw hot sparks behind his eyes. He staggered and began to fall, but caught himself by grabbing on to the desk. He didn’t realize until later, after he had staggered back to the bus and sat down, that blood had soaked his hair and was dripping onto his shirt.

  Now, hours after the incident, he couldn’t bear to tell the children about the inhalers. He felt it would introduce them to an idea he found too evil to share with them—the idea of a world so random and uncaring, so indifferent to human suffering, that it chilled his soul.

  “What else did you see in the house?” Lucy asked. “Are there mothers and children there? Kids our age?”

  “I saw some women, but no children.”

  “Maybe they’re in school,” Lucy told the others. “It’s a school day, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Wednesday. That’s probably where they are,” Walter said.

  “But maybe,” Lucy said in a quivery voice, “maybe the children who live here are buried in a bus, too, just like us. Maybe they’re in our bus that we came in. Maybe they’re lambs who are chosen, too, and maybe—”

  “Dummies!”

  The hoarse voice came from the back of the bus. They all turned to look. Philip Trotman, who hadn’t spoken a word in more than ten days, was kneeling on his seat, his nose cherry red, his eyes bloodshot from weeping. “Lucy, you’re such a dummy. He’s going to kill us. That’s why we’re here. He’s going to kill us and you know it.” Tears dripped down his face. “He calls us lambs. Firstborn. I go to Sunday school. In the Bible, lambs get killed and then burned up—burnt offerings. And in Egypt the firstborn all got killed one night.”

  They were all silent. Lucy looked as if she’d been slapped.

  Walter had tried with all his might to avoid this discussion. How would he keep them calm now?

  Then Josh began a furious high wheezing, violent and wracking. Kim slipped her arm around him and was holding the wet towel for him, crooning his name.