“How many were in the camp?” Fletch asked Wolfe.
“Forty-one.”
“I guess a few slept late.”
Wolfe said, “They’re under their beds. Bastards. All of ‘em. There was nothing I could do with them. Such fools, useless, dumb fools.”
Fletch held Jack’s shopping bag of disks and tapes. “Let’s go,” he said to his son.
Jack dashed into the log cabin. He came out carrying the guitar by its neck.
Wolfe asked, “Where? Where are you going?”
Fletch shrugged. “Out into that big, scary world out there, I guess.”
At the sound of the whimpering, Fletch turned back to survey the encampment.
Like a sniffing puppy, Tracy, in his uniform, was darting from one dead body to another, looking at each for a moment, wringing his hands, making this most pitiful noise of distress, fright, shock.
On the porch, Wolfe drew his pistol from his holster. He waved it vaguely in the air.
For a moment, Fletch was unsure whether it was Wolfe’s idea to shoot at Jack and Fletch, or to shoot himself.
While Fletch watched, Wolfe slumped down onto a camp chair. He lowered his head. He held his pistol between his knees.
Yellow sunlight was breaking through the fog.
Wolfe’s hair turned brassy in that sunlight.
The dead bodies strewn on the ground began to cast shadows.
24
T
It was hard for each of them to assimilate what he had heard, seen, experienced, felt in a foggy encampment surrounded by woods just minutes before.
As Fletch turned onto the road away from the encampment, Jack had asked: “We’re not reporting this?”
“That’s the point, isn’t it? To report it?”
“I mean now.” Jack glanced at the cellular phone on the car seat next to Fletch. “To the cops or something.”
“You said there was no need for medical attention. Right?”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Those who were dying are dead. Those weapons don’t leave many survivors.”
“You’ll need time to do the story. Wolfe can report the mess. If he will. Let’s not blow the story.”
“I’ve heard that about you. You once reported a murder to your editor and asked him to tell the photographers to give the widow time to get home to report the murder.”
“Did I?”
“You just said I’ve got a story here.” Jack patted the plastic shopping bag on his lap.
“Oh, sure. And you think it’s a little hotter, more immediate than a master’s thesis?”
“Well, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never read a master’s thesis, let alone written one.”
“For whom am I doing this story?”
“You mean, for which news organization?”
“Yeah.”
“Your choice. It’s your story.”
“Don’t you have some sort of influence at Global Cable News?”
“Me? Not much.”
“You’re consulting/contributing editor for GCN.”
“Well, yeah. They pick up the phone to me.”
Jack looked out his window. “I guess I could call Jack Saunders. He must know somebody who would be interested in this story.”
“Yeah,” Fletch said. “You might do that.”
“But I’ve got all this videotape, “Jack said. “What would the print press do with it?”
“Good point. Well, we might give GCN a try. If that’s what you want to do.” As he drove, Fletch pressed Andy Cyst’s home number into his cellular phone panel. “Andy! Sorry to wake you up.”
“Yes, Mister Fletcher,” Andy slurred into the phone. “It’s all right, Mister Fletcher. Really.”
“Come on, now, Andy. I haven’t bothered you since yesterday.”
“Yesterday: Sunday. The day before: Saturday.”
“Do you guys think you’ll be able to make anything much out of that Blythe Spirit story?”
In the car, Jack’s eyes cut to Fletch.
Andy’s voice became more awake. “Actually, Mister Fletcher, it may turn into a good story. We’re surrounding it with talking heads, other experts, to give their opinions on the therapy Blythe Spirit is offering, and at what prices! Looks like it might turn into a story of genuine medical fraud.”
“Atta boy, Andy. I thought we might end up about there.”
“And, Mister Fletcher: until two this morning I was looking into something called The Tribe. You remember you asked about something called The Tribe? Well, it looks like a helluva story—”
“That’s what I’m calling about, Andy.”
“What?”
“The Tribe. Expect a news break on The Tribe any minute now. What you get at first won’t be the real story. Not even close. Probably won’t even mention The Tribe by name.”
“What’s the break?”
“At a supposedly secret camp in the woods in Alabama, thirty-eight members of The Tribe just shot each other.”
“Did you say, ‘shot each other’?”
“It was foggy. One nut started shooting and they all started shooting. Thirty-eight dead. Among the dead is a man who called himself The Reverend Doctor Commandant Kris Kriegel.”
“The escapee from the federal pen in Tomaston, Kentucky.”
“The same.”
“He’s dead?”
“No deader than he should be.”
“Which is pretty dead.”
“Very dead.”
“I was researching him last night. I mean, this morning. That was the clue I took from you. Kris Kriegel.” Now Andy’s voice was excited.
“Also escapee John Leary has finished shaking the earth.”
“By the way, they recovered Juan Moreno’s body yesterday. In some farmer’s gully in Tennessee.”
“That’s nice.”
“Mister Fletcher, have you got this story? I mean, of the shooting?”
“Who, me?”
“No? You haven’t?”
“Andy, at ten-thirty your time, do you think you could meet someone at National Airport?”
“Sure. Who?”
“A young reporter named Jack Faoni.”
“Why does that name sound familiar to me?”
“He has everything. Complete computer files on The Tribe from around the country, around the world, membership lists, lists of those targeted for assassination”—Jack grinned broadly across the car seat at Fletch —“bank accounts, their plans, personal knowledge of Kris Kriegel. He’s even got videotape of the shooting this morning.”
“Wow!”
