The Rapture of Omega Page 22

  “Where is Illeana?” I sternly asked Michael.

  “They’ve got her cuffed inside the tent. Cee, listen, you’ve been through a lot. Why don’t you—”

  I ignored him and headed straight for the tent. Michael followed, pleading along the way. We had been past partners, we were lovers, and best friends; he knew me better than anybody. That said, he knew something was coming down between Illeana and me.

  “Cee, think before you do something stupid—she’s not worth it!” he begged.

  Hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes officers were around, covering bodies, tending to the children, and keeping the ever-growing media out. However, when I entered the tent and saw Illeana standing to the side, it grew immediately quiet. She was standing between two federal agents and had her hands cuffed behind her back. The instant she saw me, the sickening smile that I had grown to loathe began to spread across her face. I stood in front of her, inches away with a hardened stare.

  “Well, hi there, Sergeant. Did you have a good swim?” she said calmly.

  She must have known what was coming because her smile faded just as I threw the hardest punch I’d ever thrown—hitting her square in the face and knocking her backward. My hand was still sore from the punch I laid on Paula Terman, a punch that didn’t compare to this one. I was becoming a regular Muhammad Ali.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You can’t do that!” one of the agents yelled as he grabbed her to keep her from falling.

  The blood from her nose poured down onto her white robe, splattering it in a sickening reminder of the blood of others she had shed. Michael put his hand up to the agents, a silent order to let the assault go unnoticed. My hand began to instantly swell, but I no longer felt any pain.

  “Take this piece of garbage and get her out of my face,” I ordered two federal agents.

  Although shocked to be given an order from a local police sergeant, they conceded when Michael nodded at them. As they were escorting her from the tent, she turned ever so slightly and looked at me. Through the flowing blood, I saw her smile had returned.

  After she had gone, I noticed a group of living adults that had been handcuffed and seated on the floor.

  “Who are they?” I asked Michael, gripping my swollen hand.

  “They’re members. They stayed in the tent and were going to kill themselves after the children. They didn’t go with the others in case those men you shot couldn’t handle drowning all those kids. Fuck, CeeCee! I heard you scream on the radio and heard the gunshots when I got here and thought I was too late.”

  “Michael.” I felt the tears well up in my eyes again.

  “C’mon, let’s go outside.” He put his arm around me.

  We went to the side of the tent that was opposite the bodies. I had seen enough. I sat down on a large rock and Michael embraced me.

  “I’m so tired,” I said quietly. “Michael, you can’t imagine what I saw. They were holding them under the water and I couldn’t save them all! It made me sick and I couldn’t…” My voice began to crack.

  “Shh, it’s okay, baby.” He rubbed my shoulders. “CeeCee, these people were sick. They made a choice! If you stopped them today, they would have done it another day. But you did save those children!”

  He stepped in front of me. “Listen, I have to supervise the scene here. Why don’t you rest here for a while, and I’ll find someone to take you home. You can give a statement tomorrow. God knows this is going to be an awful scene to process and clean up. I can only hope that storm passes us,” he said, referring to the rumbling in the sky.

  “CeeCee! Are you okay?” Naomi asked breathlessly.

  I hadn’t even noticed her approach us. Coop was with her, a look of shock on his face at the gruesome display of bodies and traumatized children.

  “I’m okay. What are they going to do with the children?”

  “First they’re going to have to find out who all of them are, which is going to be a chore in itself. Then, I really don’t know. This is a hell of a mess,” she mumbled.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if she still felt guilty over her earlier decision to end the investigation. I hoped not. The thought that the bodies we’d found in the barn didn’t come close to being the worst of it made me shudder.

  “How did you figure out they were back here, CeeCee?” Coop asked.

  “Something Illeana said to me on the phone when we were in West Virginia. This whole time I thought I knew what the numbers on the wall meant, but she told me I hadn’t figured it out yet. I thought she truly believed in what she preached, about Eve’s coming and all, and how she kept saying they were preparing because it would be soon, and all that.” I reached up and pulled a clump of mud out of my hair. “She would have never just hidden out. She felt too strongly about the coming, and when Michael told me they were not in West Virginia, I noticed today’s date and it pretty much all came together.”

  “8-24,” Coop announced. “I would’ve never figured it out. Fuck! This is unbelievable.”

  “You saved that little boy,” Naomi said. “I looked in on him in the ambulance and I think, physically, he’s going to be okay. He’s beautiful.”

  “To think that innocent child watched his parents die, knowing he was next. Imagine what he was going through,” I said.

  “Don’t do that to yourself, CeeCee,” Michael said. “You can think about it until the end of time and you’ll only make yourself nuts. Most times we’ll never understand the reasons why, but we have to accept those reasons regardless.”

  “Agent Hagerman, we need you over here,” a fellow agent called.

  “I’ll be there in a minute!” He looked down at me. “You’ll be all right? Coop, can you take her home?”

  “Of course we will,” Naomi answered for him.

  As Michael walked away, I told them both I was perfectly capable of driving my car home. The only injury was my hand.

  “How did you do that?” Naomi asked, inspecting the swelling balloon.

  “I must’ve caught it between rocks when I was in the river,” I lied. “Right now, I want to see who those survivors are, and see if they’re talking.”

  We walked into the tent where the group was still seated, guarded heavily by officers in uniform. Naomi asked the sergeant, Jim Keyes, if they’d said anything.

  “Nope, not a thing, Captain. We can’t even get their names, let alone if any of the children belong to them. They just sit there and stare like a bunch of zombies.” He shook his head.

  “If you can, let me know when you get them identified, Jim,” I requested.

  “Sure, CeeCee. You okay?”

  “I’m okay, thanks for asking,” I said, patting his arm before leaving the tent.

  Naomi, Coop, and I stood quietly, staring at the sea of bodies that covered the clearing. It was surreal. In my opinion, none of them looked at peace. Death was marked on each of their faces, some with their eyes open, painting a disturbing portrait of their frame of mind when they took that first step into the river. Their heads rested on the feet of the members that died before them, and so on, forming the large circle.

  For them, the Rapture of Omega had finally come.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  The media helicopters hovered above, no doubt showing the rest of the nation the gruesome and final resting place of the cult members. I realized then that the children were no longer there.

  “Where are all the children?” I asked Naomi, scanning the landscape.

  “They took all of them up to the farmhouse. Every children’s services worker in the county is up there with about a dozen counselors, trying to calm the children down and find out who they are, and if they have any relatives. It’s a mess.” She rubbed her eyes.

  I wanted to go up there. I thought if I saw the children again, knowing I had saved them, I’d feel a little better about the situation. As I started up the trail, I saw the sheriff talking to one of the federal agents at the opening of the tent. I gave him a sl
ight wave; he nodded back.

  Once I reached the front porch of the main house, I realized I had made a serious mistake. The screams and cries coming from inside told me that the children were just as hysterical as they’d been earlier, if not more. I found Lori near the front door. Her eyes were red and swollen; this night was taking its toll on everyone involved.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked.

  “Um, not great, as you can see,” she sniffed. “I’ve never in my life imagined anything as horrible as this. I can’t imagine what those children went through when they watched their parents die.”

  She began to cry softly and reached into her purse to grab a tissue. I looked down the hallway into the prayer room, where the children had converged with the other caseworkers. I touched Lori’s arm and asked her if she would be okay. When she said she would, I went down to the room.

  There wasn’t much room to walk around. With fifty children and twenty caseworkers, it was packed. The workers had separated the children into groups by age. The older children had seemingly calmed down, while the little ones were still hysterical. I walked over to a group of the youngest children and saw little Jack Martz huddled against another child, crying. I bent down and gently brushed his cheek.

  “Hello there, Jack Martz. Do you remember me?” I said softly.

  Hiccuping and rubbing his eyes while maintaining a grip on his friend, Jack looked up and nodded ever so slightly.

  “You gave me the wose,” he said, barely audible.

  “That’s right, I gave you the rose. My name is CeeCee,” I said slowly, calmly, and kept a warm, inviting look on my face. “Do you remember a long time ago, a little girl, just a baby, named Lola?”

  The little boy Jack was holding on to perked up at this. His face lit up and he raised his head. “I do! I ’member Lola!”

  “You do? Good. What about you, Jack Martz?”

  He nodded, his tears appearing to lose their momentum. “I wember Lola, too.”

  “Very good. I want to tell you a story about Lola. You know Lola’s mommy died, too. And she was very sad,” I began, and when Jack let go of his friend and crawled up on my lap, I certainly didn’t protest. “But then, Lola came home to live with me. She has two sisters, a brother, and a mommy and daddy who love her very, very much.”

  “You Lola’s mommy now?” Jack asked.

  “Yes, that’s right. And she’s very happy, just like all of you will be strong little boys, and will one day be happy again, like Lola.”

  They were quiet for a few moments, drinking in what they could understand. I noticed the other children around me had quieted down a little, to listen to the story about Lola.

  “Can you be my mommy, too?” Jack asked.

  He caught me off guard. Knowing children as I do, I should have anticipated that question, but given my state of mind, I can’t say I was thinking all too clearly. I needed to be extremely careful when choosing my words. God knows if I could have taken them all home, I would have—but that simply was not an option.

  “Oh, Jack, I would love to be your mommy, but there’s lots of other nice mommies out there, too! Some that would love you just as much, give you puppies and toys”—I tickled him slightly in the belly and he giggled—“and make you just as happy as Lola! But I’ll always be your friend. Okay?” I smiled wide.

  Jack reciprocated. “Okay! When will I meet my new mommy?”

  “How about if we all try to calm down and answer the nice lady’s questions for right now, and I’ll work on it. Deal?”

  Jack and his friend nodded up and down furiously, tugging my heartstrings with a vengeance. An image flashed through my head of Jack being carried to the river and drowned, and I almost had to physically shake my head back and forth to remove it. I suspected I would have a lot of those images in the coming weeks, and most likely months.

  I stood up and lightly kissed the top of Jack’s head. “I’ll see you soon, Jack Martz.”

  One of the women social workers mouthed a silent, “Thank you,” as I walked away. Scanning the crowd of children, I noticed something. When Lori had come back into the room I asked her about it.

  “Lori, there were four children living in this cult that had fumarase deficiency. I don’t see them anywhere.”

  “What’s fumarase deficiency?” She was visibly confused.

  “It’s an extremely rare genetic disorder. The children have physical impairments, facial disfiguring, body deformations, and other things. Believe me, you couldn’t miss them. I don’t see them anywhere.”

  “Let me check around.” She paused. “You don’t think they were…” She let her voice trail off, not wanting to admit the horrific possibility.

  Unfortunately, I was thinking the same thing.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  “I hope not, but I’ll go check it out. Let me know if you find out something different.”

  I started down toward the river again, but was met halfway by Naomi. Unfortunately, she was already looking for me, holding the answers I wasn’t sure I wanted.

  “I’ve got some bad news,” she sighed, putting her hands on her hips. “There were some children down there, in the circle.”

  “Oh, Jesus!” I muttered. I started to pace back and forth. “Let me guess—four of them, all with facial deformities?”

  She nodded, but I knew there was more coming. “There were ten children total. We got some of the survivors to talk. Apparently, some of the parents wouldn’t go without their children—they were all drowned together.”

  My stomach gave a quick flip, and I groaned loudly.

  “I swear to God, Naomi, we’ve been through a lot together, but I think this is just entirely too much to take.”

  We stood quiet for a few moments, listening to the bustle of a large crime scene. I felt helpless and hopeless.

  “Naomi, would you do me a favor?” I stared down at the bright lights coming from the riverbank. “Would you go to my car, it should still be parked halfway up the driveway, and get in my trunk? The keys are in the ignition.”

  “Sure, why?”

  “In the trunk I always have a box of stuffed animals. Of course, I never thought I’d need all of them at once…” I swallowed the lump that began to rise in my throat. “There should be enough. Could you take the box up to the house and pass them out to the kids? There’s a big yellow stuffed dog in the box—the biggest, I want you to give it to a little boy, he’s four, and he’s sitting with all the littlest ones by the hallway. His name is Jack Martz. He’s blond with big blue eyes, you can’t miss him. Tell him it’s from me. I’d do it myself but I don’t think I can go in there again tonight.”

  “Of course, CeeCee.” She started walking by me and stopped. “You know, I keep thinking about that little boy you saved. I’ve checked in on him in the ambulance about three times now. His name is Mason—he told me. There’s something about him…” Her eyes began to fill with tears, which she promptly wiped away. “I think I’ll go see him at the hospital tomorrow.”

  She walked away without waiting for a reply.

  I made my way to the river again and found Michael among the hordes of people. They were trying to figure out how to get the bodies out, since it was impossible to get any vehicles down there. Michael was clearly overwhelmed and I had to tap his shoulder, firmly, to get his attention.

  “Sorry, Cee. You okay?” He looked distracted.

  “I guess. I wanted to know if we identified the surviving members in the tent. Specifically, I want to know if any of them are parents to some of those children up at the house.”

  I really wanted to know because I wanted to waltz in the tent and spit in their faces, although I didn’t tell Michael that. Also, I was simply curious.

  “Actually, we did. Brace yourself. One of them is Illeana’s son.”

  My eyes widened. “What? I didn’t know she had a son!”

  “Yup, his name is Donovan—he’s twenty. And he was her silent partner through this whole thin
g. Kirk Richards failed to mention his part in the murders of Francesca Tracy and her family. Donovan Barron was there, and he pulled the trigger more than once.”

  “Where’s her husband?” I looked around.

  Michael gave a sarcastic laugh. “He’s over there, heading up the circle of death. Illeana made him go first in the suicide, to show everybody it was ‘easy,’ and they shouldn’t be scared.”

  “Of course she did, that cowardly bitch.” I felt anger rising again. “Who are the other people?”

  Michael pulled his notebook out and began flipping through several pages of handwritten notes. He kept flipping back and forth; I was growing impatient.

  “Um, let’s see…Oh! Here it is: Donovan Barron, Derick Strock, Kimberly France, Susan Brody, Jill Campbell, Elgin Daniels, and Donald Long.”

  “Donald Long? He was the one who rented the apartment across from the station to watch me. Derick Strock? Benjamin Rader’s wife said he befriended a guy named Derick before he left his family—it had to be him.”

  “Make sure you note all of that,” Michael said, as if I needed to be told. “We’ve got a lot of interviews to do.”

  “There’s only one person I’m interested in sitting across a table from—Illeana Barron.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Cee,” Michael said. “Especially since you punched her out. We need a lot of information from her, specifically helping to identify these people. Plus, I don’t think she’ll talk to you.”

  “Believe me, she’ll talk to me. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure I’m the only one she’ll talk to.”

  “I hope you’re right.” He looked up at the sky. “I think I got my wish. The storm seems to have passed, thankfully. What a nightmare that would’ve been, cleaning up these bodies in the middle of a monsoon.”

  “Not to mention the river is pretty near crested. Any more rain and this entire area would be underwater. We would’ve been cleaning up bodies miles down the river.”