Allyson was baffled. “Why would the ranger leave a message like that on his phone if he was dying? Seems like he would have called 911.”
“Not sure, but we can’t stick around here to figure it out,” he answered with growing concern, then motioned toward the door and placed the phone back in the curled hand of the park ranger.
The three made their way out of the exhibit room and into the main lobby, heading to the front entrance. Sean reached the inner door to the building first and started to open it, when he froze in his tracks. Outside, in the parking lot, two county police cars had pulled into a few empty spaces thirty or so feet away from their own vehicle.
“What?” Allyson asked.
“Police are here,” he responded pseudo-calmly.
“But how did they…?” Joe started to ask but Sean cut him off by motioning for the group to move back into the building. Fortunately, the glass doors to the Information Center were tinted, so seeing people inside from the parking lot was nearly impossible. Sean looked from right to left, trying to find an alternate exit. There were a set of stairs to the right of the information desk, an option he didn’t like because it immediately cornered them in whatever was on the second floor.
To the left was a door underneath the word “Theater”. Thinking that most theaters had exits, Sean quickly said, “In there.”
The door to the movie room closed behind them a split second before the two police reached the top of the porch outside.
It hardly seemed like much of a theater. There were four rows of auditorium style seats with a medium-sized screen on the wall in front. Sean stood near the doors for a moment, listening closely. When he heard the inner of the two front doors to the building open, he quietly ushered the other two toward the front row. As he’d suspected, there was an exit near the front of the room.
Moving quickly, the three companions made their way beyond the seats over to the single door with the red “exit” letters hanging over top of it. Upon reaching the door, Sean hesitated a moment. Some doors had automatic alarms on them so that in case of an emergency, warning would go throughout the rest of the building. As his hand pressed down on the handle, he hoped that this wasn’t one of those.
The device clicked and opened easily into the early afternoon daylight. No alarm sounded as they slipped out of the building undetected and back around the front of the building to the truck.
Chapter 47
Finding the Beacon Tabernacle proved to be easy enough thanks to the Hummer’s navigational system. Fifteen minutes after leaving the state park, Big Guard whipped the SUV into the parking lot of the church. There must have been a thousand words to describe what the men in the car were thinking as they stared at the monstrous building. But silent awe was all that was projected.
The Beacon Tabernacle was situated in a valley of rolling hills right on the crest of a slight rise. From the parking area, the view of the surrounding mountains and hillsides was serenely beautiful. Patches of orange, red, and yellow forest dotted the landscape, the trees’ leaves on fire for the season. In between the dense cropping of woods, a few small farms dotted the land.
Tommy looked around at the scenery. “They sure picked a nice spot,” he whispered to himself. No words had been spoken since they had left the museum. He was still in disbelief at the brutal manner in which Ulrich had killed the innocent parks worker.
Still, something about the Indian seemed as if he had been prepared, almost looking forward to the whole thing, like it was part of a bigger plan.
Ulrich and the two guards exited the SUV and also took a brief glance around. Their reason for looking was more to make sure no one had followed, rather than to appreciate the stunning visuals.
A solitary, gray pickup truck sat quietly outside the entrance. He assumed the vehicle belonged to the church’s sexton. Most churches didn’t require a person to work the facility during the week, due, mostly, to the small number of people using it. This building, though, boasted more than three thousand patrons. Despite its large seating capacity, the church was forced to offer three services during the mornings just to accommodate everyone.
The four men cautiously approached the building. Unlike many churches in the South and Northeast that were essentially boxes that angled up to a point in the roof with a steeple at the front; The Beacon Tabernacle was most certainly a unique piece of architecture. Not cathedral-like either, its roof gradually rose to one side of the building and, then, dropped off dramatically. And there was no steeple, only three steel beams of varying heights precariously placed off to the side of the entrance on a separate patch of landscaping.
Another interesting point of note was the lack of crosses. Most Christian churches he’d seen had several crucifixes decorating windows, doorways, pretty much everything. It seemed odd that there were none at this location. In fact, the building seemed to be missing many stereotypical decorative items of Christianity. Two rows of slender stained-glass windows decorated the pale brick walls of the exterior. But even though the sheer size of the place was impressive, the design itself seemed somewhat simple, almost made to look plain.
The shorter guard reached the large wooden doors of the church first and grabbed the brass handle. Apparently, the door weighed more than he expected and the jerking motion pulled him off balance for a second. Slightly embarrassed, he held the door for the other three to walk in first.
Upon entering, the four men found themselves in something that completely offset the outside of the building. Just past the second set of large doors, the ceiling dramatically vaulted up into a five-story-high angled glass roof that extended the length of the room. On the other end of the vast atrium, a tiled staircase extended upwards in front of elevator doors.
Even the usually stoic guards seemed impressed. The dumbfounded looks on their faces spoke to the fact that they had never seen anything quite like it. The church’s lobby wasn’t more amazing than the Sistine Chapel or any of the other great Cathedrals of the world, but the striking beauty of the inside, when compared to the ordinary exterior of the building, truly was an amazing contrast.
As they stepped further into the giant room, they saw an older man at the other end of the mezzanine with a white head of hair behind a welcome desk. He must have heard them enter because he was in the process of folding up his newspaper.
Ulrich’s patience with allowing Tommy to ask the questions had seemed to wear thin and he spoke directly to the church worker. “We are from out of town and heard of your church from our friend here. Would it be possible for us to look around?”
It was unbelievable. Was this the same man who had just gunned down an innocent park ranger not half an hour ago? Now his demeanor had done a complete 180. He spoke smoothly and politely to the old man and did not appear to have any desire to hurt him at all, like a snake waiting quietly in the grass.
“Certainly,” the sexton replied. “Feel free to take a look around. The rooms and offices across the way there are closed for the day,” his skin and bones hand extended towards the place about which he was speaking. “But you can go up the elevator to see the balcony and you may take a look around in the main floor of the sanctuary as well.” Thin lips pursed into a welcoming smile.
“Thank you,” was all that Ulrich offered.
Five sets of stairs led into the main sanctuary. Above, a small chapel was situated on the second floor, the outside wall of which was covered by a spectacular painting of multiple scenes from Jesus’ ministry. The pictorial history climaxed emotionally at the top with a depiction of the second coming. The canvas alone was at least fifteen feet in length and another eight feet wide.