“Bad news is, these same pictures are already on the Internet, leaked anonymously, and now popping up on all the nuttier religious conspiracy sites presumably so they could hide the source of them for their news piece. We’ll take them down as fast as we can but they’re starting to get picked up by some of the news outlets and spread around on Twitter. We can’t keep this genie in the bottle, which means we have to find Kinderman fast before he really goes to ground or Cooper’s angels of death get to him.”
“I could use the e-mail I found on Douglas’s laptop, tell Kinderman what’s happened here and offer the hand of friendship and protection.”
“The tech guys arrive there yet?”
“Yeah, they’re currently making friends with the local folk.”
“I bet. They’re not going to like you walking all over ‘their’ crime scene but a man’s life is at stake here. Use the laptop and wear gloves. If they complain about it in their report I’ll say I ordered you to do it.”
“Okay. I’ll let you know if he bites. You want me to head back to Charleston after I’m done here?”
There was a silence on the line and somewhere in the background Shepherd could hear Cooper’s voice still ranting away. “You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” Franklin sounded distracted. “You should get some rest then drive to Charlotte, it’s nearer than here. I’ll warn them you’re coming.”
“What about you?”
“Call me if you get anything from Kinderman.” The phone clicked before Shepherd could respond, and the line went dead.
By insisting that he needed to use Douglas’s laptop Shepherd succeeded in annoying both the FBI tech guys and the local PD. He ignored their looks and whispers as they worked together to photograph and remove Douglas’s body from the wall while he crouched over the keyboard, figuring at least he’d done his bit to get them cooperating with each other. They were united now in thinking he was an asshole.
He opened Kinderman’s last message by using pens to tap the keys, hit reply and then paused. He would have only one shot at this. Get it wrong and Kinderman would shut down the e-mail account and vanish again. His eyes flicked to the countdown, getting smaller all the time.
He could try and draw him out by pretending he was Douglas but he didn’t know enough about their shared history to do it convincingly. Also, according to Franklin, the pictures of Douglas’s murder were already on the Net and starting to garner press interest. If Dr. Kinderman had seen them then a voice from beyond the grave was hardly likely to win his trust. On the other hand if, he had seen them, fear was a useful tool.
Shepherd tapped on a browser icon and started hunting for the pictures. It didn’t take him long. A couple of clicks away from Cooper’s own Web site he found a page dedicated to the coming revelation. It was a thoroughly nasty piece of work, full of hate and damnation, with a whole section dedicated to what it called “The Great Blasphemy of the New Tower of Babel.” There were pictures of Hubble as well as Kinderman and Douglas, with captions beneath identifying them as the architects of the great offense. There were also headlines and links to various unfolding news stories telling of the sabotage and explosions, then — at the bottom of the screen — Shepherd found a grainy version of the room he was now standing in, a quote from Ezekiel emblazoned beneath it:
Then they will know that I am the Lord,
when I lay my vengeance upon them.
The quote was typed in letters the same color as Douglas’s blood. Shepherd imagined someone in a basement, lit by the glow from his screen and the demented fire that burned within him, matching the color from the photograph then hitting the publish button, pleased with his little design flourish. He hoped the FBI would hit him hard when they eventually caught up with him. He copied the link and posted it in the e-mail.
He then found the link on Cooper’s site to the clip of him and Franklin being quizzed about the explosion at Marshall and the sabotage of Hubble. He pasted that in too and started to type:
Dr. Kinderman,
I hope this is you. If so, my apologies for contacting you in this way. I am a former student of Professor Douglas now working for the FBI. I’m very sorry to inform you that the professor is dead — murdered — and that your life is also in danger. The same people who tracked him down to his mountain lodge are now looking for you. We know you received the same warnings as he did and that you both saw something in the missing data from Hubble. Let me help you, either in my capacity as a federal agent or as an old friend of the professor’s. Either way, I want to help. Please let me.
Yours,
Joseph Shepherd
He reread it and was surprised to discover tears in his eyes. He turned away from everyone and wiped them away. He had been so carried along by the speed of events that he had kept the brutal shock of finding the professor’s body at arm’s length — until now. Writing the message to Dr. Kinderman had opened a window straight into something raw and painful. He hadn’t been looking for the professor for very long, barely more than a day, but there was something ominous about the tragic way this search had ended that made him think about the other one, the one he had been on for eight long years. And it made him afraid.
He copied the message to his own e-mail account so he could monitor any response, then hit send and let out a breath that he hadn’t even known he’d been holding.
“Okay,” he said, “it’s all yours.” And turned to the others just as they were zipping Professor Douglas into a body bag.
84
Liv felt the tickle of sweat running down her back, her neck — everywhere. She had chosen to stay outside and lead by example. It also gave her the chance to think, the quiet monotony of her task helping to clear her mind as she tried to evaluate the significance of the new arrivals.
The doctors were now inside the compound building. Eric was immensely relieved that he was no longer the only medically trained member of the growing desert community. Liv, on the other hand, felt that there was something ominous and unsettling about the sudden arrival of so many doctors. With the last of the victims of the poisoning now dead and buried it suggested that some other medical emergency was about to manifest itself.
The convoy of four-wheel-drive vehicles they had arrived in had also contained boxes and boxes of much needed supplies and medical equipment. Most of the existing stock from the sick bay had been used up, so Liv had tried to rationalize this as being the reason they’d been drawn here. But at the core of her finely tuned instincts she knew it could not be as simple as that.
She thought about the circle with a cross through the center — the symbol of disease and destruction. It was positioned between the upward arrow of the mountain and the downward one of here. When she had first studied it she had assumed and hoped it referred to the Citadel. But now she felt the meaning was ambiguous. Its position suggested that whatever disease the symbol represented might either link the two places or separate them in some way.
She leaned against the fence post, grateful for its sturdy support, and felt the weight of everything closing down on her. The blinding light and heat were making her faint and light-headed and she felt a lurch in her stomach as if she’d eaten something bad. She shivered, genuinely cold despite the enveloping heat and the sweat still running off her. Her heart thrummed in her chest, making her vision throb. Maybe she needed to get out of the sun for a bit, have one of Kyle’s rehydration cocktails, and lie down and rest for a while.