The flock a thriller, p.22
The Flock: A Thriller, page 22
My punishment . . . my penance.
“That was never your fault,” he says. “Never your choice.”
“No, but sometimes not having a choice is the only chance you get.”
Agent Morales considers this as we both realize I’m not trying to pull away anymore, neither of us letting go. His eyes find mine. “Did you burn the Ark, Billie? Tell me the truth.”
I laugh, soft and bitter. “Is that what you want to hear? That your noble silence protected me, somehow absolved your own guilt. What do you think now, Special Agent Morales? After all these years, you tell me the goddamn truth.”
The moment stretches on between us, infinite, forever. Infinite possibilities . . . but no answers that will ever change anything now.
Finally, he says, “I need to know what your plan here is. I need that . . . if I’m going to go any farther.”
“You already know. You knew from the moment I showed up on your doorstep. You knew when you emailed those agents in New Mexico before we left Texas.”
“Jornada del Muerto?” He shakes his head. “That’s not a plan, Billie. That’s a fucking gravesite. Have you been back since? There’s nothing out there. Nothing.”
“It’s still sacred to the New Lazarians, to Ananiel. That’s where this started. That’s where it’ll end.”
“The End?” he asks as his grip slips away.
“Ascension,” I answer. “Tomorrow. Rennie’s birthday.”
“No,” he says. “No more prophecies, no fucking prophets.” His face glows in the TV’s ambient light, and it somehow makes him look younger: the way I remember him, the way I for so long dreamed about him, in the months after the raid. “No matter how fucked up the world is, it is not going to end tomorrow. The world just keeps on turning, struggling on, day after day, like always. Just like we did, after New Mexico.” He raises a chin toward Dallas. “But your friend here is going to die within the hour if we don’t get him help. And if we don’t end up dead right alongside him, we’re going to jail for the rest of our lives. All we can hope now is that Renata escapes, unscathed. I can still make that happen.”
“You don’t know her, and I wish you did.” I reach for his face, run my fingers across his fresh scars. “There were things I claimed I could do at Jornada del Muerto, things Becca denounced as false miracles and blasphemies. But Rennie is a miracle, and if you don’t believe anything else, believe that.”
He shakes his head again and reaches up and touches my hand on his face. No man has touched me like this since I met Noah.
“I don’t know that I can,” he says.
“And I only know I have to get to her.”
“That’s what they want, Billie. What they’ve likely wanted all along. For whatever reason, you’re important, too, and if it doesn’t feel right to me, it shouldn’t to you.” He pulls my hand away. “You told me you called Deborah Fallon the night you left Colorado, just before you went home and found Noah. It’s possible that call may have saved your life.” I can see he’s considering all sorts of possibilities. “Does she know anything about this?”
“I didn’t,” I admit. “I mean, no, I didn’t call her. Not then. Not in a long time. I haven’t spoken to her in months.”
I don’t tell him she hasn’t known my address for far longer than that.
He’s surprised, puzzled. “Why?”
But before I can answer, Dallas groans and tries to sit up.
He calls out Sunny’s name, his knuckles whitening on the rifle, and Agent Morales watches him a long moment before he stands and says, “I need to see if there’s a hospital nearby, a drugstore, anything more we can do for him. And if we’re still going to Jornada del Muerto, we need a new ride. You can shoot me if you want, but that’s what I’m going to do.”
“I’m not going to shoot you,” I say, making sure Dallas doesn’t rise. “Do whatever you need to.”
“I will be back,” he says, “so bolt this door after I’m gone.” Agent Morales’s eyes then flick to the TV, where something has grabbed his attention, and I wonder what new disaster it is. More birds or storms. The world on fire.
The sky falling.
“One way or another now,” he says, “this really is almost over.” And he steps aside so I can see for myself: another breaking news report out of Limon.
A picture of me—Sarah Brannen—from my Colorado driver’s license. And a video of our house surrounded by police tape and a flash of Rennie’s old play set.
Zippo’s. The Dollar General store. Nadia’s trailer.
And finally, that infamous picture of me—Sybilla Ross-Laure—walking out of the Ark of Lazarus with embers in my hair.
50
Dr. Fallon’s house is a secluded, low, rambling affair in Tesuque, just outside Santa Fe.
The adobe cabin with blue-trimmed windows hides behind thick lemon and orange trees and knotted acacia mesquite, sprawling behind an uneven wooden palisade fence. Wind chimes and dream catchers hang in the low branches, and if it were daytime, they’d be spinning shadows on the dark earth beneath them.
It’s all casual and unplanned and unmanicured and rustic—unassuming—except for the winking red lights of the high-tech surveillance cameras Elise picks out near the front door and the cardinal corners of the walls.
It’s hard for her to reconcile this place with the urbane, polished woman on the back of Nadia’s book, no matter how old the picture might be.
Finding it took more than a little digging, an exercise in her police power. Not quite an abuse of it, but not far from it either. Deborah Fallon isn’t living off the grid, but she’s gone to ground since her last public talk, in 2020.
A dog barks somewhere, and a smoky nighttime wind shakes branches and makes chime music. Otherwise, the darkened street—the whole neighborhood—might as well be asleep.
Motion lights snap on at Elise’s approach, and she waves at the nearest camera as she approaches, holding her badge up high.
The woman who answers the door probably isn’t Deborah Fallon.
There’s a passable resemblance—the patrician nose, the serious eyes—but this woman is older than Deborah, heavier set. Hair gunmetal gray, pulled up in a messy pile on top of her head. She’s wearing a flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up, and dark jeans dotted with old paint. Turquoise necklaces circle her throat, and bangles jangle on both wrists.
She has a cell phone in one hand and a small, nickel-plated revolver in the other.
Elise stays calm. “Sorry to bother you this late, ma’am. And I don’t want trouble. I’m just looking for Dr. Fallon. Deborah Fallon.”
The woman who is probably not Deborah Fallon blinks slow. “Why?”
Elise laughs, hoping to deescalate this situation. “Honestly, I’m not sure you’ll believe me. I don’t know if I believe it myself. But I was hoping to ask her some questions, maybe get her help, on a case out of Colorado. I’m a police chief up there.” Elise shows her badge again, holding it faceup in the palm of her hand. “I don’t want to lie to you. This case is being actively worked by both the FBI and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, so they may already have approached Dr. Fallon, or soon will. I’m here somewhat unofficially.”
“Is Deb a suspect?” the woman asks. “Unofficially?”
From the way she asks it, underscored by exasperation and worry, Elise understands the woman would not be surprised if Deborah was. And it strikes Elise that until this very moment, the thought never crossed her mind. “No, I don’t believe so. Unless you tell me something otherwise.”
The woman thinks it over and then tucks the shiny silver-dollar revolver beneath her flannel shirt. “When it comes to my sister, I’m not sure there’s much I wouldn’t believe anymore either.”
Elise nods. “If it weren’t important, or time wasn’t of the essence, I wouldn’t be here now. This has to do with the Ark of Lazarus—specifically, Deborah’s connections with Sybilla Laure, and whatever she might know about Ms. Laure and her activities over the last few years, including last night, in Limon, Colorado.”
“Well, Deb wasn’t here last night. She hasn’t been home in a month or more.”
Elise turns that over. “Do you know where she might be?’”
Deborah’s sister takes Elise’s badge and holds it up close, then hands it back and opens the door wider, inviting Elise into the dark interior.
She says, “I was hoping you were here to tell me.”
51
The first time Special Agent Eladio Morales saw Sybilla, it wasn’t that day he was out surveying the Engle property, no matter what all the official reports said.
It wasn’t even the two weeks of visual presurveillance around Jornada del Muerto before that.
It was about a month earlier, in Elephant Butte. May 2013. He was there checking on the availability of extended-stay motel rooms for himself and his cover team and taking pictures of the surrounding area. And until that moment, the Ark of Lazarus was just another thick file folder, a mess of FBI intel reports and internet videos and ATF straw-purchase records: hundreds of hours of transcribed interviews of individuals associated with the cult, as well as former business partners, friends, and lovers of Etan Laure’s.
The Ark was merely a puzzle Eladio was still trying to fit together, to wrap his head around and understand.
He was walking out of one of Elephant Butte’s two gas stations, heading to his car, when he saw her.
She was across the street, staring right back at him.
He didn’t know then how young she was, only that she was raw, beautiful.
But he did know immediately she was Ark of Lazarus by the long skirt she wore. It struck him as a silly affectation, an old-timey costume, although older women in the group had greater freedom in their dress when they were out and about, at least according to his intel and the interviews. Sybilla—later confirmed by going through his accumulated pictures and videos—was standing in the shaded awning of a small pharmacy, her blonde hair down, dark deco sunglasses pushed up on her head, just another one of those weirdly out-of-tune notes, those little modern touches here and there, that pulled you out of the Ark of Lazarus daguerreotype. Long tresses for the women. Thick, unkempt beards for the men.
But then, expensive sunglasses. Or a TAG Heuer watch peeking out of a cuff. An iPad or laptop casually slung over a shoulder in a soft leather case.
It was hard to reconcile the ancient, convoluted mythology and biblical beliefs with their glossy brochures and websites and the Ark compound’s DirecTV satellite subscription, with Laure’s two Range Rovers parked in a garage in Truth or Consequences—one a pearl-white Evoque, the other a black supercharged V-8—and his mail-order erectile dysfunction medication and extensive stock portfolio.
Here was a doomsday prophet worried about future market shares, and the whole puzzle just wouldn’t come together for Eladio. The picture didn’t make sense; none of it did.
Most of the cult members weren’t clinical; they didn’t have a diagnosed mental illness. Many were well educated and well off or had been. They did seem, however, to be plenty damaged. Going through the background files, he discovered more than a few had suffered significant losses and tragedies in the months preceding their arrival at Jornada del Muerto, and there, at least, was something he could grasp. After the passing of his own mama, Paola—who’d raised him alone, holding down numerous hand-to-mouth jobs just to do so—he’d entered a few dark months of what could only be described as depression or a fugue, his own quiet despair.
If he hadn’t reached out for the FBI’s Employee Assistance Program, seeking consolation, peace, would he have grabbed for a lifeline like the Ark of Lazarus? He didn’t think so. He considered himself too grounded, too smart, but then again, there were a lot of smart people over at that compound.
And Etan Laure, for all his bullshit and Ponzi schemes, all the smoke and mirrors and magic tricks, was no dummy.
The issue of Eladio’s mama came up when he was being interviewed for this assignment. Only four months removed from her funeral—and his three free sessions with the EAP counselor protected by privacy laws—her passing was still no secret around the FBI.
Group Supervisor Coats asked him point-blank: Are you up for this? Look, I know you lost a parent recently, and that can be tough. And this assignment is going to be even tougher, a total bitch. There’s no issue if you want to pass.
But he didn’t want to pass, so there was no issue. He told GS Coats he was all good, clearheaded, ready to work. Ready to throw himself into something, ready to lose himself in something.
He didn’t bother telling GS Coats that his mama—who cut garden flowers every Saturday and arranged them in a gypsum vase by a picture of her own dead mother—had long been a devout Catholic. How she went to Mass three times a week like clockwork and had died with their local parish priest by her side; how she used to remind her son, Eres muy bueno haciendo planes, Lalo, pero no tan bueno tomando decisiones.
A plan was based on facts at hand, but a decision was an affair of the heart. A decision was a choice; it took faith.
She also warned him, La fe, no facilita las cosas, las hace posibles.
Faith didn’t make things easier; it only made them possible.
The last words his mama ever uttered out loud were, Ya veo, Ya veo . . . I see, I see . . . as she pushed her old wooden rosary into his hand.
Sitting in front of GS Coats’s desk, Eladio decided then he was going to do whatever he had to do to take down Etan Laure.
Eladio watched the beautiful girl watch him and wondered if he would meet her, talk to her soon.
Wondered if she would remember him.
The idea that any federal agent could infiltrate the Ark of Lazarus was a long shot, and that shot was Eladio Aaron Morales. Long-term undercover operations, previously used against the mob and outlaw motorcycle gangs and later white supremacy and alt-right groups, fell in and out of favor, proving too expensive and posing far too many logistical, ethical, and legal issues. But the Ark of Lazarus was proving particularly difficult to penetrate otherwise. The usual methods of surveillance and wiretaps just didn’t seem to work with them.
But there was no doubt they were buying up and storing weapons and explosives and too many serious, if not corroborated, allegations of child sexual abuse and extortion for them not to take action. Within two years they’d popped up on every domestic terror watch list—and no one dismissed domestic terrorists anymore—and the families of those who’d watched their loved ones disappear down the Ark’s rabbit hole had become increasingly vocal.
It was difficult to pinpoint when the group had moved from some sort of pseudo-self-improvement movement to a doomsday cult, but the thought around FBI headquarters was that they were a growing threat that could no longer be ignored, a danger not only to themselves but to others.
But standing there in that dusty street that day, the beautiful blonde girl with the dark sunglasses on her head didn’t look dangerous. She didn’t look like any kind of threat at all.
She looked like a college student—
Like an angel.
A month later he saw her out at Engle, and Billie said, I’ve seen you before.
And he didn’t know if she was remembering him from that day in Elephant Butte, that quiet moment they’d shared across the sunny street from each other.
His hair was a little thicker, his three-day shadow a little longer, but if he recognized her, there was no way she didn’t recognize him.
He clenched up, waiting for her to call him out in front of the others. But she told him only that she’d been dreaming about him, that she dreamed about so many things, some of which ended up real and some that didn’t. She reached out and touched his arm and said, But you seem real enough to me.
Before smiling and walking away.
52
Deborah Fallon’s private office is at the back of the house, with a long row of windows that look out on more fruit trees, wild forsythia, birds of paradise.
It smells like leather and smoke, the citrus tang from candles or incense, and it subtly reminds Elise of Nadia’s trailer, that combination of ephemeral smells and burdened bookshelves and leaning files and papers. The flotsam and jetsam of diplomas and photos and mementos and memories.
But where Nadia’s place had a fairy-tale quality, a princess’s high tower, this is dark and cluttered and claustrophobic, dungeon-like, and the room presses in heavy and hot, like it’s breathing on you. Standing in this inner sanctum is like looking inside someone’s mind, stealing a peek at their darkest thoughts, everything that might’ve been troubling or preoccupying them.
If that’s true for Dr. Fallon, then she’s been troubled and preoccupied by only one thing for a long, long time—
The Ark of Lazarus.
Judy Jowell, twice divorced but still holding on to one of her former husband’s names, takes it all in with Elise. She’s embarrassed by it.
“It’s a mess,” she says. “I tried to go through it, looking for . . . I don’t know what. Clues? That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? That’s what they do on all those CSI shows.”
“It’s easier on TV,” Elise says. “And they have really good writers.”
Judy laughs, but without much heart. “My sister was a writer, a real student. She was . . . a lot of things. I was the one who married too young, had too many kids.” Judy picks up a random book, puts it carefully, gently, down again. “We were very different.”
“Always?”
Judy nods. “Pretty much. We were never super close or anything like that. Not distant, just not close, if that makes sense.” And it does to Elise, since it might as well describe her relationship with Denny, even though it seems to be getting further and further apart by the day. “Deb was . . . is . . . a good person. She always meant well, always wanted to help people. She didn’t ask for any of this nonsense to end up at her door.”
