“I think I'm gonna add Waterville to the list of places I'm never gonna retire to,” remarked Angel as we stepped into the building. “Along with Bogotá and Bangladesh.”
“I'll break the sad news to the Chamber of Commerce,” I told him. “I don't know how they'll cope.”
“So where are you planning on retiring to?”
“Maybe I won't live long enough for it to become an issue.”
“Man, you sure going the right way about it,” said Louis. “Grim Reaper probably got your number on speed dial.”
We followed Angel up the thinly carpeted stairs until we arrived at a wooden door with a small plastic sign nailed to it at eye level. It read simply: THE FELLOWSHIP. There was a bell on the door frame to the right, in case anyone somehow managed to sneak in the front door without Ms. Torrance turning on them like a hungry rottweiler. I slipped out my mini Maglite and shined it on the lock. I had taken the precaution of wrapping some duct tape around the top so that only a thin beam of light about half the size of a dime showed. Angel took a pick and a tension tool from his pocket and opened the door in five seconds flat. Inside, the lights from the street shone on a reception area with three plastic chairs, a wooden desk with a telephone and blotter on top, a filing cabinet in one corner, and some vaguely inspirational pictures on the walls featuring sunsets and doves and small children.
Angel jiggled the lock on the filing cabinet and when it clicked, pulled open the top drawer. Using his own flashlight, he illuminated a pile of conservative and religious tracts published by the Fellowship itself and other groups of which the Fellowship presumably approved. They included The Christian Family; Other Races, Other Rules; Enemies of the People; Jewry: The Truth About the Chosen People; Killing the Future: The Reality of Abortion; and Daddy Doesn't Love Me Anymore: Divorce and the American Family.
“Look at this one,” said Angel. “Natural Laws, Unnatural Acts: How Homosexuality Is Poisoning America.”
“Maybe they've smelled your aftershave,” I replied. “Anything in the other drawers?”
Angel went through them quickly. “Looks like more of the same.”
He opened the door into the main office. This was more elegantly furnished than the reception area; the desk was marginally more expensive, with a high-backed imitation leather chair behind it and a pair of couches in the same material against two of the walls, a low coffee table between them. The walls were covered with photographs of Carter Paragon at various events, usually surrounded by people who didn't know any better than to be happy around him. The sunlight had shone directly onto these images for a long time. Some of the photographs had faded or turned yellow in the corners, and a coating of dust added a further element of dullness. In the corner, beneath an ornate crucifix, stood another filing cabinet, stronger and sturdier than the one in the reception area. It took Angel a couple of tries to get it open, but when he did his brow furrowed in surprise.
“What is it?” I said.
“Take a look,” he replied.
I walked over and shined my light into the open drawer. It was empty, apart from a thick coating of dust. Angel opened the other drawers in turn, but only the bottom drawer contained anything: a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers. I closed the drawer and reopened the one above it: there was only dust, and dust that obviously had not been disturbed for a long time.
“Either this is special holy dust,” said Angel, “which would explain why it has to be locked up safe at night, or there's nothing here and there never was.”
“It's just a front,” I said. “The whole thing is just a front.” Just as Amy had told me, the Waterville organization was simply a mask to fool the unwary. The other Fellowship, the one with the real power, existed elsewhere.
“There must be records of some kind,” I said.
“Maybe he keeps them out at his house,” suggested Angel.
I looked at him. “You got anything better to do?”
“Than burgle a guy's house? No, not really.” He took a closer look at the lock on the filing cabinet. “Tell you something else; I think someone tried to get this open before we did. There are marks around the lock. They're small, but it was still a pretty amateur job.”
We relocked the doors and headed downstairs. At the back door, Angel paused and checked the lock with the aid of his pocket light. “Back door's been opened from outside,” he said. “There are fresh scratches around the keyhole, and I didn't make them. Guess I didn't see them because I wasn't looking for them.”
There was nothing else to say. We weren't the only people interested in finding out what was in Carter Paragon's files, and I knew that we weren't the only ones hunting Mr. Pudd. Lester Bargus had learned that too, in his final moments.
Carter Paragon's house was quiet as we drove past. We parked our cars off the road, in the shadows cast by a stand of pine trees, and followed the boundary wall of the property around to a barred security gate at the back of the house. There were no video cameras visible, although there was an intercom on the gatepost, just as there was at the main entrance to the house. We climbed over the wall, Angel and I going first, Louis joining us after what seemed like a very reluctant pause. When he hit the soft lawn, he looked in dismay at the marks left by the white wall on his black jeans but said nothing.
We skirted the house, staying within the cover of the trees. A single light burned in a curtained room on the upper floor at the eastern side. The same battered blue car was parked in the drive, but its hood was cool. It hadn't been driven that evening. The Explorer was nowhere to be seen. The curtains on the window were drawn tight, so it was impossible to see inside.
“What do you want to do?” asked Angel.
“Ring the doorbell,” I replied.
“I thought we were going to burgle him,” hissed Angel, “not try to sell him the Watchtower.”
I rang the bell anyway and Angel went quiet. Nobody answered, even when I rang it again for a good ten seconds. Angel left us and disappeared around the back of the house. A couple of minutes later he returned.
“I think you need to take a look at this,” he said.
We followed him to the rear of the house and entered through the open back door into a small, cheaply furnished kitchen. There was broken glass on the floor where someone had smashed a pane to get at the lock.
“I take it that isn't your handiwork?” I asked Angel.
“I won't even dignify that with an answer.”
Louis had already drawn his gun, and I followed his lead. I looked into a couple of the rooms as we passed but they were all virtually empty; there was hardly any furniture, no pictures on the walls, no carpet on the floor. One room had a TV and VCR, faced by a pair of old armchairs and a rickety coffee table, but most of the house appeared to be unoccupied. The front room was the only one that held anything significant: hundreds and hundreds of books and pamphlets recently packed into boxes, ready to be taken away. There were American underground training manuals and improvised weapon guides; instructions for the creation of homemade munitions, timers, and detonators; catalogues of military suppliers; and any number of books on covert surveillance. In the box nearest the door lay a stack of photocopied, crudely bound volumes; stenciled on the cover of each were the words Army of God.